Cabinet reshuffle slammed as ‘gratuitous bloating’

Civil society organisations and political parties on Tuesday slammed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet reshuffle for failing to tackle some of the country’s most pressing challenges including unemployment, the alarming crime rate and declining healthcare.

On Monday evening, after much delay and speculation, Ramaphosa announced changes to his cabinet, with some ministers being moved to different portfolios and most of his detractors getting the chop.

The reshuffle saw the appointment of Paul Mashatile as the country’s deputy president and the creation of two new ministerial posts —  electricity and planning monitoring & evaluation. The former will be headed by Kgosientsho Ramokgopa and the latter by Maropene Ramokgopa.

DA leader John Steenhuisen said the changes were “less a reshuffle and more a gratuitous bloating”.

“Contrary to a commitment made in 2019 to reduce the number of ministries in the national executive, he has chosen to augment his cabinet by a further two ministries.

“The ministers of electricity and of planning, monitoring & evaluation, will add an additional R74m to the public wage bill. It is simply unfathomable that the president can push this cost onto the SA taxpayer while the nation languishes under sluggish economic growth, the highest unemployment rate in recent history, and an electricity crisis that is shedding jobs at record numbers,” Steenhuisen said.

Build One South Africa spokesperson Sbu Zondi said the reshuffle was “a hugely disappointing  affair, proving to citizens just how out of touch this ANC government is with the needs and concerns of citizens”.

Zondi slammed the moving of the “same rotten apples” to different posts when this is the last thing the country needed in “a time of socioeconomic crisis”.

“As South Africans worry about the economy, crime, education, healthcare and keeping the lights on, the president saw it fit to simply rearrange the employment conditions of old, out-of-touch ANC deployees in cabinet, giving many people new roles to repeat old failures. 

“What’s worse is that Ramaphosa further bloated the cabinet adding two more ministers which South Africans will pay for. The blue lights, the security and the houses including generators so that they do not experience load-shedding.”

Zondi criticised the president for keeping ministers Bheki Cele, Gwede Mantashe, Pravin Gordhan and Angie Motshekga in their respective posts despite their “failures” in their portfolios.

Rise Mzansi national convener Songezo Zibi said citizens must not fall for “political window-dressing” with the appointment of an electricity minister “when we don’t have ministers for unemployment, poverty, inequality, exclusion, violent crime and other serious challenges that violate the rights of ordinary South Africans”.

“These problems do not exist because there is no dedicated minister for any of them. Instead, the government collective does not know how to resolve them any more, alternatively does not care for anything other than that there is an election the ANC is worried about losing next year.”

Zibi said citizens can no longer put their hope in more reshuffles when the changes have failed to bring results and instead only made things worse.

IN FULL | Newly appointed cabinet ministers