RAMAPHOSA’ S CABINET RESHUFFLE THAT WASN’T

The president’s reshuffle has attracted a deluge of criticism — in particular for its lack of any dramatic change to a largely ineffective cabinet. But the president was hamstrung, party insiders say, by some critical factors

There is no way to sugarcoat it: the long-awaited cabinet reshuffle by President Cyril Ramaphosa was a deep disappointment — a damp squib. Insiders, however, argue that there were critical factors that prevented the president from making sweeping and dramatic changes.

The overriding factor informing Ramaphosa’s risk-averse approach, they say, was the 2024 national election. The prospect of the polls saw him roll the dice in a highstakes political game that favoured internal ANC dynamics over the needs of a broader electorate set for the polls next year.

It’s a risky gamble — and only time will tell whether it pays off.

It could pose a problem down the line. “[Ramaphosa] doesn’t need a political mandate, he got that at Nasrec 2 [the December 2022 ANC elective conference],” an insider privy to the reshuffle process tells the FM. “What he and the party need is an electoral mandate.”

In short, Ramaphosa in his reshuffle again swelled the ranks of cabinet despite his vow, when he took office in 2018, to trim it down. In addition, he announced the appointment of Paul Mashatile as deputy president, and Kgosientsho Ramokgopa as the much-touted electricity minister. And he gave Lindiwe Sisulu, Nathi Mthethwa and Maite Nkoana-Mashabane the chop.

But what was startling was who stayed on, rather than who was axed.

Police minister Bheki Cele will remain in his post, despite his inability to deal with crime in a meaningful way. The two crucial education portfolios — basic and higher education — continue to be occupied by ministers (Angie Motshekga and Blade Nzimande) who have failed to improve education outcomes and management for more than 10 years.

Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma was also retained, though she was shifted to the presidency, where she will take up the women, youth & people with disabilities portfolio previously held by Nkoane-Mashabane.

Dlamini Zuma’s shift came as a surprise: she was widely expected to be axed after she openly went against the party line during a noconfidence vote against Ramaphosa in parliament in December.

She was also failing as minister of co-operative governance & traditional affairs (Cogta), with municipalities across the country hobbled by infighting, mismanagement and — to put it mildly — poor service delivery.

It is understood that Ramaphosa painstakingly put together his reshuffle plan, consulting widely —

What it means:

inside and outside the ruling alliance

— and also working very closely with ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, the party’s former head of elections.

“All those removed had one common feature: they don’t have a distinguishable base inside the ANC that would come back to bite the party in the run-up to the election,” says a national executive committee source.

As for the controversial ministers who were retained, well Dlamini Zuma, for one, is seen as a proxy for former president Jacob Zuma — and he continues to enjoy support in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The ANC draws the bulk of its support from outlying provinces such as KZN, the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and Limpopo.

“You cannot alienate your base in KZN in an election year. NDZ [Dlamini Zuma] was a different ball game. The last thing you want is for JZ [Zuma] to use this as an excuse to wreak havoc among ANC structures in that province,” says the NEC source.

Another source, a member of one of the ANC’s provincial executives, tells the FM: “If you look at it, KZN contributes roughly 33% to the ANC’s votes nationally. You can’t have Zuma going on the offensive there when there is already a resurgence of the IFP.”

And so Dlamini Zuma was kept on, amid fears that removing her could become a rallying point for Ramaphosa’s opponents in KZN — and destabilise the party structures as they ready themselves for next year’s polls.

The dire situation the ANC is facing in KZN is borne out by recent byelection results, and in both the 2019 and 2021 election outcomes.

Independent elections analyst Dawie Scholtz tells the FM the ANC is bleeding support across the province. This is particularly marked in the north, where the IFP is cashing in on voter dissatisfaction, and in urban centres, where the EFF is making inroads.

“Based on the 2021 [local] election and by-election results, the ANC is likely to be headed sub-50% in KZN in 2024,” says Scholtz.

The IFP is making a serious comeback: it snatched two wards from the ANC in January and February by-elections, giving it control of the Inkosi Mtubatuba municipality without needing to rope in the EFF, the party said in a statement. In December, it snatched a ward from the ANC in eThekwini, a feat it has been unable to achieve since 1994.

“It is also a clear indication and demonstration of what is to come in the 2024 national and provincial elections,” IFP provincial chair Thami Ntuli tells the FM.

Ramaphosa’s other move to keep KZN on-side was to appoint former premier Sihle Zikalala as public works minister. And to keep Cele in his post — despite those he consulted making a concerted push for the police minister’s removal.

The ANC’s alliance partners — and the constituencies they bring to the table — also had to be factored into the reshuffle plans, and were consulted a number of times.

The SACP, for its part, was dead set against the axing of its chair, Nzimande, and it fought to retain Thulas Nxesi as minister of employment & labour.

With an election looming, Ramaphosa had to keep on side those who have substantial support within the ANC, as well as the party’s alliance partners

“The party went as far as campaigning against the promotion of other ministers from its ranks to prevent moves against Blade and Thulas,” an alliance insider tells the FM.

It is understood that deputy ministers of higher education & training (Buti Manamela) and trade, industry & competition (Fikile Majola) were being considered for ministerial posts, but the SACP rejected this for fear of Nzimande and Nxesi being removed as a result.

“There is no president that can mess up the alliance now. We can’t have running battles with the alliance this close to the election and in the middle of a public sector wage strike,” an NEC member tells the FM.

Another reason the reshuffle was underwhelming was the fear that newly appointed ministers would take time to settle into their positions, leaving them unable to achieve much in the short lead-up to the polls. So taking the political risk of appointing them appeared unnecessary.

“What fundamental change can happen in six months?” the source asks. “New ministers will take up to 10 months to settle, so the question is what would have been the point?”

Ramaphosa’s focus on continuity is clear in the promotion of deputy

Cogta minister Thembi Nkadimeng to head the portfolio, and deputy transport minister Sindisiwe Chikunga being bumped up to become minister of transport.

A rising star in the communications portfolio, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni was shifted to the presidency too to rein in the abominable mess that is state security. It continues to be deeply factionalised, split between groups that are loyal to Zuma, to a lesser extent to former president Thabo Mbeki, and even to former state security minister Ayanda Dlodlo.

The FM understands that Ntshavheni was a reluctant participant in the move.

Within the presidency, Ramaphosa also reinstated the position of planning, monitoring & evaluation minister. ANC second deputy secretarygeneral Maropene Ramokgopa was appointed to take up this post.

Ramokgopa, along with the National Treasury, will be charged with rationalising government departments — very likely only after the 2024 election (assuming the ANC retains its majority in parliament).

Ramaphosa’s parliamentary team is also set to kick off a process to boost the quality of party members occupying ANC benches, giving him a wider pool of leaders to choose from for a post-election cabinet.

But bloating aside, the reshuffle was deeply problematic in other ways. First, it took so long to put into effect that there was no way Ramaphosa could meet the expectations he’d created through nearly three months of consultations.

Second, he had very little to work with, given the deadwood among ANC MPs; the parliamentary list is a throwback to the Zuma and Ace Magashule era.

Third, the reshuffle came on the back of deep economic and political turmoil, with citizens hoping against hope that a single act could shift the needle for the better.

That, it seems, is not to be. Ramaphosa’s demeanour in his brief television crossing spoke volumes. He appeared drawn, tired and weighed down by what he was announcing. He appeared more apathetic about exercising his presidential prerogative than did the nation watching him do it.

A dramatic surgical overhaul of the cabinet was always a long shot. But Ramaphosa and his allies will now be hoping their gambit pays off in the longer term. Both his and their political fortunes depend on it.

In recent years, railway beds in the UK have melted from extreme heat, electricity grids have frozen in Texas, and Europe has ground to a halt as a result of catastrophic flooding. In South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) was hit by severe flooding in 2017, 2019 and again in 2022. The most recent event was one of the worst in the country’s history.

Global temperatures have already risen 1.1°C relative to pre-industrial levels, and the scientific consensus is that further warming is inevitable. The harm is expected to become exponentially worse if global temperatures increase beyond 1.5°C, as seems likely.

Global climate reports present mind-numbing data on the dire future that awaits the planet. South Africaspecific statistics are easier to grasp, though less easy to come by. Fortunately, climate economist Brent Cloete, an associate at Pretoria-based consultancy DNA Economics, has derived a regional report for Southern Africa from the latest global Climate Vulnerability Monitor, or CVM (third edition).

The CVM process is driven by a high-level global research consortium. Its methods and models are peer reviewed and its latest findings chime with the “Sixth Assessment Report” of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cloete’s paper, “Climate Vulnerability of Southern Africa”, was commissioned by Economic Research South Africa, a regional CVM partner.

Cloete’s prognosis, based on the latest CVM data, is bleak for the five countries studied — Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Eswatini and South Africa. Under a 2°C global warming scenario, the region is expected to warm above the global norm, averaging an additional 1.3°C by the end of the century.

However, socioeconomic challenges and developmental backlogs mean the region lacks the resilience to cope with this looming disaster.

South Africa warms at roughly twice the global average. This means that if the world has already warmed by 1.1°C, South Africa is about 2.2° hotter. So an extra 1.3° will put the country up by a total of 3.5°C by 2090.

Cloete’s paper shows that whereas there were 850 heat-related deaths of elderly people in South Africa in 2005, there will likely be about 12,000 by 2090 under a 2°C global warming scenario.

By 2090, there will also be more than 10 additional, severe droughts per country every 20 years and there could be malaria in Lesotho. In South Africa, even 1.5°C of global warming will create conditions in which an outbreak of dengue fever could become an epidemic.

Unsurprisingly, given that Southern Africa is already water-stressed, the region is one of the most vulnerable to climate-linked food insecurity. Rising temperatures and the increased frequency of droughts will significantly reduce key crop yields and labour productivity while pushing up food prices and disrupting supply chains, the research shows.

The impact on maize, a major staple in the region, will be particularly severe. Even if warming is contained below 3°C, nonirrigated maize production will no longer be viable in the country, says Cloete.

Under a 1.5°C warming scenario, South Africa will experience a 5.4 percentage point increase in moderate to severe food insecurity by 2090 due to heatwaves (see graph).

The likely upshot is that food prices, inflation and interest rates will rise, and

GDP growth will fall.

Clearly GDP forecasts made 60 years into the future need to be taken with a large pinch of salt. But as a purely indicative exercise, the research shows that under a 2°C global warming scenario, South Africa could expect GDP per capita growth to fall by at least 3.4% a year on average by the end of the century. Under conditions of extreme climate change, it could drop more than 13% on average annually.

In addition, the region will likely experience climate-linked migration from even more vulnerable (and hotter) countries further north.

“The marked difference in vulnerability between the three largest economies in Southern Africa and the rest of SubSaharan Africa means that significant climate-linked migration to Southern Africa is possible,” warns Cloete. “Immigration in a low-growth environment has already created social instability in South Africa, and this could be exacerbated by climate change.”

In short, the region could become an apocalyptic wasteland in 60 years — with South Africa at the centre of it — if the country doesn’t step up its efforts.

Certainly, the stakes could not be higher. Many South Africans are concerned that looming water shortages will dwarf the socioeconomic costs of the current electricity crisis — and be a lot harder to work around than Eskom’s load-shedding schedules.

So far, South Africa’s agricultural sector has proved remarkably resilient, despite receiving little state support. There is widespread agreement within the sector as to what it needs to do to mitigate, and adapt to, climate change to protect the viability of farming and food security.

Commercial agriculture’s focus is on raising its general efficiency, and some “truly significant and important work” is being done, says Janse Rabie, who represents Agri South Africa on the Presidential Climate Commission.

For instance, there is a significant push to boost the adoption of precision technology, including satellite, drones and other remote measuring and sensing tools, to help farmers optimise their water and fertiliser usage and adopt more efficient practices.

There is also an increasing shift towards conservation and regenerative agricultural practices, which limit the use of synthetic fertilisers, eliminate ploughing and require that farmers rotate fields and maintain constant crop cover.

However, significant increases in input costs — energy, water, labour, fertiliser, and machinery, for example — are already threatening the sector’s viability.

“There is only so much room for it to absorb these costs while also meeting further mitigation requirements being imposed by the government and export destinations like the EU,” says Rabie.

Increasingly there is a trade-off between farmers’ ability to survive in the short term and the sector’s long-term need to reduce its use of fossil fuels and synthetic fertilisers, while also contributing to the carbon tax — something it will be required to do from 2026.

South Africa-based Cambridge University development economist Gracelin Baskaran says strengthening the country’s infrastructure and financial resilience to climate shocks is essential to South Africa’s long-term sustainability.

One of the biggest impacts, she argues, could be had in building climateresilient infrastructure. This means any new rail or road should be constructed to withstand storms and floods as well as 40°C temperatures, and commercial buildings and factories designed to minimise the need for artificial cooling.

She points to the long-term costs of flood damage in KZN: “Each time the same roads and bridges get washed out and have to be rebuilt repeatedly. This is costing it [the province], and the country, dearly.”

According to Baskaran, every dollar invested in climate-resilient infrastructure in middle-income countries yields $4 in benefits. Not only does it reduce the reconstruction costs, it also minimises business disruptions and ensures people can get to work, children can get to school, and people can access hospitals.

She also recommends that South Africa set aside a contingency fund for loss and damage attributable to climate change.

“We know the frequency and severity of climate shocks is going to increase, yet the contingency reserves are often depleted by bailouts of state-owned enterprises, public sector wage increases and the like,” says Baskaran.

Cloete agrees that the funding going towards climate adaptation in South Africa is nowhere near what is required.

He points out that the crime, energy and water problems all started off as longer-term concerns that didn’t receive sufficient attention until they turned into acute short-term crises. He fears that the same is happening with climate-change adaptation.

“Day Zero in Cape Town, the recent floods in KZN, the drought in the Eastern Cape, all show that it is becoming increasingly costly to adapt to climate change, particularly for the public sector and insurers,” he says.

“Increased investment to enhance resilience to climate change makes much more sense than continuing to spend ever-increasing amounts to recover from climate disasters, which are becoming more frequent, more severe and more costly.”

Cloete stresses that a regional response to climate change is also required. He notes that intra-African trade and regional food value chains are notoriously inefficient and opaque. Making them work better is going to be critical to responding to increased food insecurity.

This, he says, will require better trade facilitation, more efficient markets, improved climate risk forecasting and the creation of dedicated adaptation funds to allow entities along the value chain to deal with and recover from climate disasters.

“A lot of work has been done to include climate change into private and public sector planning frameworks. It is now time to move beyond awareness and planning to implementation,” says Cloete.

“This will require an increase of several magnitudes in funding to initiatives to increase resilience to climate change.”

Ultimately, climate economists agree that there is nothing more important for South Africa than achieving a just, lowcarbon transition, as this will help drive sustainable economic development, strengthen social cohesion and generate the resources needed to deal with climate change.

If done well it even has the potential to solve some of South Africa’s current short-term crises. We live in hope.