President Cyril Ramaphosa and others have said that the new Cabinet stems from the electoral outcome and the voters’ desire to include people from other parties. This appears to be a concession that politics has trumped competence and is more important than how well the appointees manage their portfolios.
However, it’s no different from what has happened in the past. Cabinets composed entirely of ANC members always reflected the internal politics and balance of power within the party. This new multiparty situation is more complicated but pretty much the same in its nature.
Instead of an ANC leader having to take into account various factions inside his party and manage the representativity of language, ethnic and geographic groups, a range of other parties now has to be included.
Leaders in other democracies often have to make similar choices and experts are seldom appointed to cabinets as they are not elected. Politicians occupy the Parliament benches and the Cabinet must represent the wishes of voters (it is for this reason that the President can appoint only two people from outside the National Assembly as ministers).
All of that said, this Cabinet will be judged a success or a failure on whether it grows the economy.
It needs to be understood just how difficult growing the economy will be.
While our political situation has changed, we are still dependent on the global economy. Outside of the US, demand for our goods from many countries, and in particular China, may well decline shortly if their economies slow.
Godongwana is key
Will the members of the new Cabinet follow the right policies and create an environment that enables the economy to grow?
The key position here is that of the finance minister, Enoch Godongwana.
Having played the role of handbrake on populist economic policy in the ANC for more than a decade as chair of its sub-committee for socioeconomic transformation, he is likely to follow roughly the same policy as before.
He has said he is committed to reducing debt and has implemented cost-cutting across government departments.
While this has led to howls of outrage from people on the left, including influential economists, it may well have reduced the generational inequality that would have been felt by our children, who would have had to pay back the debt incurred by the current generation.
That said, the budget cuts of departments like health and education have had a huge impact on many people and in particular the poorest.
Godgonwana now has two deputy ministers. David Masondo has returned for another term after a relatively low-profile five years, while the DA’s Ashor Sarupen enters government for the first time.
This may well result in Godongwana having more support for his preferred policies. Masondo is a senior leader in the SACP, whose ideas may now be counterbalanced by those of Sarupen.
Mantashe’s disastrous term
Two crucial ministries to enable economic growth are the Minerals Resources Ministry and what is now the separate Energy Ministry.
Gwede Mantashe has returned to the Department of Mineral Resources after a disastrous first term. As Daily Maverick’s Ed Stoddard has shown, Mantashe presided over a department that did not process a single application in the 2023/24 financial year.
There can be no better demonstration of how this Cabinet is about politics and not competence.
That said, Mantashe is no longer in charge of energy, as former Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has taken over that portfolio.
The success of Ramokgopa’s approach to fighting load shedding and the huge contribution made by the private sector in building generating capacity suggests Mantashe will no longer be able to obstruct renewable power growth in South Africa.
As The Economist recently observed, the growth of solar power means that “an energy-rich future is within reach”. Decisions made in the next five years will have a crucial impact on South Africa’s economic future and one of the main stumbling blocks has now been removed.
The situation at the Department of Small Business Development is less easy to understand.
There is no public evidence that Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams was a champion for smaller firms during her previous term as minister in that department.
Her illegal lunch during the Covid lockdown may have prevented her from playing much of a role during the pandemic.
However, even since then, she appears to have done very little.
Considering the importance of smaller firms, why put someone with no track record during their first term back in this position?
Contestation and clashes
Then there is the situation at the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC).
Perhaps no other portfolio will see more contestation between the ANC and the DA than this; it is the very embodiment of the politics of economics and power.
The ANC is likely to continue the trajectory of former DTIC minister Ebrahim Patel, who appeared to intervene as often as he could in the economy.
While there is irrefutable evidence that our economy is overly concentrated, dealing with this will be difficult.
It also goes to the heart of the debate about BEE and the fact the DA does not agree with race-based redress.
Some of the problems in this sector are complex.
For example, when Grand Parade Investments wanted to sell its stake in Burger King’s SA operations the black owners of these shares found they could only sell them to black people, otherwise the company would not be BEE-compliant.
That placed limits on the options available to black people that would not have been experienced had they been white.
In the middle of this is the fact that the new minister in this portfolio is the ANC’s Parks Tau, while the deputy minister is the DA’s Andrew Whitfield.
This portfolio might well see the biggest clashes of the new government.
There are likely to be policies the ANC wants to follow that the DA will not accept, and the ANC might feel public criticism from the DA and Whitfield about this is unacceptable.
In the communications ministry, the situation is reversed — there the DA’s Solly Malatsi is the minister, while the ANC’s Mondli Gungubele is the deputy minister. (The tension here is worse because Gungubele was formerly the minister.)
What would happen if Gungubele were to publicly criticise Malatsi’s policies?
The problems in this portfolio will also be intense — the SABC needs financial help, the SA Post Office is disappearing and the communications field as a whole is changing rapidly.
But again, public tension between a minister and a deputy minister would not be unprecedented.
This has happened before, when all involved were members of the ANC.
In 2017, the then deputy mining minister, Godfrey Oliphant, told 702’s Xolani Gwala that he could not say the department was not “captured” by the Guptas. It was an important moment and revealed the real actions of Mosebenzi Zwane as minister at the time.
However, now, instead of Cabinet tension being kept confidential, debates are likely to be much more open — with all of the tension and transparency that will bring. DM