Trim SA’s Cabinet to build capacity and boost productivity, urges think-tank

12 Jun 2024

The Centre for Development and Enterprise, a think-tank, believes that a smaller Cabinet of 20 ministers would be ‘more agile, more collegial, and more able to maintain a degree of collective oversight and collective responsibility’.

SA politicians, who are in the throes of negotiations to form a government of national unity, have been urged to consider shrinking the Cabinet to bolster public sector productivity and responsiveness.

The size of the Cabinet should be cut to about 20 ministers instead of the current 30, and the functions of the Presidency should also be overhauled to oversee the implementation of key reforms by government departments.

This recommendation has been proffered by the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) think-tank, in its series of reports Agenda 2024: Priorities for SA’s New Government. The reports are aimed at making recommendations to transform the public sector and rebuild state capacity, which the CDE believes has been weakened over the past 15 years by systemic corruption and bad appointments to key positions.

Cutting the size of the Cabinet is the first step, with the CDE saying that “smaller Cabinets are more agile, more collegial, and more able to maintain a degree of collective oversight and collective responsibility”.

“Smaller Cabinets are also likely to be more ideologically coherent and less prone to bouts of policy contestation. This is enormously important for reformers, particularly when large swathes of policy and government work need to be revamped. In these circumstances, the bigger the Cabinet and the more diverse its views, the harder it may be to make progress,” the report reads.

Arguably, a bigger Cabinet has been a stumbling block for President Cyril Ramaphosa over the past five years, as decision-making on pro-growth and investment reforms (especially in electricity and logistics) has moved at a glacial pace because he often sought consensus with his political colleagues.

Shortly after Ramaphosa was sworn in as President in 2019, he reconfigured the Cabinet by trimming it from 36 ministers to 28 through the amalgamation of several departments. The leaner Cabinet was meant to reduce government spending.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Ramaphosa cuts Cabinet from 36 to 28 ministers, half of whom are women

However, towards the end of his presidency, Ramaphosa added new functions in the Cabinet, including the creation of a Minister of Electricity role within the Presidency, tasked with coordinating the government’s efforts to end Eskom blackouts.

CDE executive director Ann Bernstein said trimming the Cabinet should also be backed by appointing credible and capable individuals.

“The first principle for selecting Cabinet members is that, even if they cannot all be ideological soulmates of the President, he must still try to choose the best available people; ie, those with the necessary experience and skills to lead large government departments, keep reform on track, and sell those reforms to a range of constituencies.

“A prerequisite for the job should be that ministers must also be personally honest, because corruption in the Cabinet will undermine everything that a reformist President wants to achieve. The President should insist that every member of the Cabinet disclose to his office all relevant financial interests, as well as sources of income and wealth for themselves and their families.”

The disclosure of financial interests should always be updated and if a Cabinet minister is found to be dishonest, they should be automatically deemed ineligible to serve.

Bernstein said the President must make “full use” of his constitutional prerogative to appoint two Cabinet ministers from outside the National Assembly. “This is a crucial mechanism to bring in new leadership and specialist expertise into key positions at a time of national crisis.”

Proposals for a new Cabinet

To reconfigure the Cabinet, the CDE has proposed that several existing ministries should either be left as they are but with their mandate amended, completely scrapped or combined with others.

For example, in the economic cluster, the departments of trade, industry and competition; mineral resources and energy; and tourism would be combined under the Economic Ministry. The Department of Employment and Labour would be left as is, but with a primary focus on reducing unemployment. See the full list below from the report:

Source: Centre for Development and Enterprise

Departments that should be scrapped include electricity and public enterprises. There are plans afoot to either shift state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to their line departments or under a holding company of SOEs, which would erase the need for the Department of Public Enterprises.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Amended National State Enterprises Bill still rings governance and presidential power alarm bells

The departments of small business development, and public works and infrastructure, would also be done away with. However, the Department of Public Works’ mandate of managing and maintaining government infrastructure would be transferred to provinces.

Strengthening the Presidency for reforms

To reorganise the Presidency and strengthen its capacity, the CDE recommended bringing back the Mbeki-era Policy Coordination and Advisory Services (PCAS) unit, which was mothballed in 2010 and resulted in a “deterioration in the quality of Cabinet discussions”.

Located in the Presidency, the unit had a range of functions such as assessing future risk and addressing bottlenecks in the implementation of complex multisectoral policies. It also ensured that the President was properly and fully briefed on all the key proposals on the Cabinet’s agenda.

The CDE said, “A critical role that [the] PCAS should be tasked with is that of playing devil’s advocate in respect of policy proposals, testing the plausibility of the assumptions, the methods used to cost proposals, the extent to which risks have been considered, etc.

“It should also work closely with the National Treasury, which must be tasked with providing a definitive assessment of whether the cost implications of proposals being made to Cabinet have been properly calculated and whether these are affordable.”

The final step in rebuilding state capacity would be strengthening Operation Vulindlela and targeting it as a delivery mechanism for reforms across the state. Operation Vulindlela is a joint initiative between the Presidency and National Treasury that seeks to support and motivate government departments to change the fabric of the economy by implementing a small number of pro-growth and investment reforms across energy, logistics, water and the visa/immigration regimen.

Read more in Daily Maverick: SA’s structural progress gains momentum, but two potholes are in the way: red tape and the power crisis

The CDE said Operation Vulindlela should absorb the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation and “reconstitute itself as a delivery unit focused on making sure priority reforms are implemented”.

Already, some players in business have warned that the reform momentum should continue and be accelerated by the incoming administration.

Martin Kingston, the chair of Business for South Africa, a pan-industry body that is assisting the Presidency, SOEs and government departments with implementing reforms, said the incoming administration should promote a stable government, respect the Constitution and believe in business-friendly policies.

“If there is any indication that there’s either a deceleration of reforms or the strategic decisions taken to date are going to be interrupted, then that is going to undermine confidence and create significant concern by both business and in the market,” he told Daily Maverick. DM

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Proposals for a new Cabinet

Strengthening the Presidency for reforms