GARETH VAN ONSELEN: How chaos has come to control Jacob Zuma
Much of Zuma’s ability to manipulate power lies in the organised chaos he orchestrates — but his relentless reshuffles come at a cost
On March 30, President Jacob Zuma reshuffled his Cabinet for the eleventh time. All things being equal, with the dust settled it is possible to take a more dispassionate look at Zuma’s general approach to reconstituting his executive and Cabinet and to see what insights we can draw. Since constituting his first cabinet in May 2009, the president has made 126 changes to the national executive. The latest reshuffle means any given national executive lasts an average of just 8.6 months under Zuma. Thus he has created an atmosphere of permanent volatility and uncertainty at the top of government. It would seem to be the result of three distinct factors. First, there are those changes necessitated by incompetence or poor performance. These are rare, inconsistent and never explicitly explained. Sometimes a minister will be removed on the back of gross maladministration but one can only speculate that to be the cause. Dina Pule, for example, the former communications minister, was fired fr...
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