Telecommunications and postal services minister Siyabonga Cwele will take over as home affairs minister after Malusi Gigaba resigned last week. President Cyril Ramaphosa, during a cabinet reshuffle on Thursday, announced that he was moving Cwele to home affairs and merging the department of communications and telecommunication, under new minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams. Cwele was appointed telecommunications minister in May 2014, after serving as state security minister during former president Jacob Zuma’s first term in office. Cwele headed the state security department in the fallout of the so-called “spy tapes” scandal, which was used to drop the charges of fraud, corruption, racketeering and money laundering against Zuma. He was, at one point, a staunch supporter of Zuma, but in the run-up to the ANC’s 2017 Nasrec conference he shifted allegiance to Ramaphosa. While Cwele was serving as state security minister, his wife Sheryl was convicted of drug trafficking and was jailed for...

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