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Despite calls for Ramaphosa to remove Gwarube, coalition reshuffles could be rare

Despite calls for Ramaphosa to remove Gwarube, coalition reshuffles could be rare
Stephen Grootes
By Stephen Grootes
10 Dec 2024
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Recent reports that a faction of the ANC was pushing President Cyril Ramaphosa to remove the DA’s Siviwe Gwarube as Minister of Basic Education, and the immediate pushback from her party, reveal how difficult any kind of reshuffle involving parties other than the ANC will be. This will have huge implications for governance and may reveal that one of the true elements of the coalition is simple self-interest.

On Sunday, the Sunday Times published a report that a faction of the ANC was asking President Cyril Ramaphosa to remove Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube because of her handling of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (Bela). The Bill had two contentious clauses which are currently not in effect, relating to language policy and admissions processes at schools.

Gwarube is accused of saying that the government had reached an agreement with Solidarity on the issue, leading both Ramaphosa and Deputy President Paul Mashatile (in his capacity as head of the “clearing house” that resolves disputes in the coalition) to rebuke her publicly.

The DA’s response was quick and resolute. News24 quoted its leader John Steenhuisen as saying that removing Gwarube “would signal the end of the Government of National Unity”. 

This almost went without saying. No party in Cabinet can really tolerate the leader of another party removing its members from Cabinet without consulting them. It would allow a president to interfere in the internal dynamics of other parties by removing and appointing supporters and opponents of the leadership of those parties.

And in some cases, the party leader is the representative of the party. Would PA leader Gayton McKenzie really stay in the coalition if he was removed from Cabinet for some reason? It would seem unlikely.

But this is just the beginning of a series of dynamics that can now play out.

It is often forgotten how Cabinet appointments almost always have nothing to do with competence and everything to do with politics. This is the case in most democracies and is the reason why reshuffles are usually about politics, and not incompetence.

It also explains why then president Thabo Mbeki carried out very few reshuffles, when the internal politics of the ANC was stable, while former president Jacob Zuma carried out more reshuffles towards the end of his term, when it was not.

But even the thought of removing Gwarube brings up other headaches for Ramaphosa.

For example, could he really remove a person for fulfilling her role, no matter how much he may dislike what she has done while allowing those with solid evidence of wrongdoing against them to stay in office?

To be blunt, could he really fire someone like Gwarube while retaining Deputy President Paul Mashatile and now Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane?

DA decisions


This situation may also reveal something about the DA’s approach to this coalition.

It is intriguing that despite having a core of people with governance experience from the Western Cape, none appears to have ended up in national government. 

People like Alan Winde or David Maynier could easily have been moved into Cabinet. The DA did not make this choice.

Considering that the party has clearly gamed out virtually every possible coalition scenario, this must be deliberate.

It may suggest that either the DA believes ensuring good governance in the Western Cape is more important than cementing its place in national government, or that it needs to ensure certain people are not affected by whatever goes wrong in national government. 

Either way, it is a curious question that these people are not in national government.

Muddling through


At the same time, the argument about the Bela Bill brings to the fore other questions.

Ramaphosa and the Presidency have still not given any cogent public reason why he did not sign the Bela Bill into law before the elections and the formation of the coalition.

It was passed by Parliament before then, and while there are processes that need to be followed, it is not clear what was stopping him from signing it into law.

If he had, none of this would be a problem – it would be law.

This will lead the cynical to suggest that perhaps it was deliberate, that he appointed Gwarube Minister of Basic Education knowing that this would be a huge issue.

Meanwhile, the fact that both the President and Mashatile, in his capacity as head of the “clearing house” that is supposed to resolve disputes, have publicly lambasted Gwarube for her actions shows there is tension in the coalition.

Read more: Gwarube’s Nedlac Bela Act deal moot while consultations continue, insist Ramaphosa, Mashatile

It also shows that the mechanisms set up to manage these tensions are either not working or have never really existed in the first place.

This reveals something about how the coalition was formed. This was not the product of careful deliberations. It was all rushed because our Constitution obliges the National Assembly to meet two weeks after an election, and to then elect a president.

That said, it seems obvious the ANC and the DA had been discussing coalitions for some time before the elections.

Meanwhile, as Marianne Merten has pointed out, the President’s actions in saying he was “suspending” the two contentious clauses in the Bill don’t make sense.

As she says, this is particularly because he does not really have the power to just say this and make it so. Instead, when he proclaims the Act he has to specify that certain clauses are suspended. As he has not yet proclaimed the Act, his public statements appear to have no legal force or effect.

All of this means that the most likely option is that no drastic action will result from any of this. Ramaphosa is unlikely to fire Gwarube, and the DA is unlikely to leave the coalition.

Instead, the coalition will do what the ANC has often done in government … it will muddle through.

This means that there will be no certainty over the Bela clauses for some time, or until an organisation forces the issue by taking it to court.

Read more: Bela Bill will immediately be taken to court if signed into law, says powerful lobby group

Unfortunately, this is likely to symbolise governance under the coalition for some time. Whenever issues of dispute do arise, because most parties in the coalition will want to stay in the coalition, and because the President won’t want them to leave, no action will be taken.

Strangely, the only exception may be when ANC ministers are involved, there the President would appear to have more freedom of action.

But as his treatment of Simelane has shown, he is unlikely to act against evidence of wrongdoing there either.

The upshot of this is that a kind of stasis may take hold of this Cabinet, and despite the very real changes under way in our politics, reshuffles might become fairly rare events. DM

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