EDITORIAL: Tell us what your advisory council recommended, Mr President

One of the emerging legacies of President Cyril Ramaphosa is that when confronted with underperformance within his administration, he sets up a parallel, non-statutory structure or appoints an adviser rather than relying on an existing line minister.

Last Thursday, instead of dealing with the failure of three ministers — Pravin Gordhan at public enterprises, Gwede Mantashe (energy) and Enoch Godongwana (finance) — to end load-shedding, the president announced he would be appointing an electricity minister.

Besides various advisers, he has surrounded himself with a range of advisory panels whose responsibilities cover areas such as the economy and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

There is nothing wrong with a president listening to as many voices as possible before making critical decisions. His predecessors surrounded themselves with such structures while former president Jacob Zuma cynically set up interministerial task teams for every problem he faced.

The difference with the Ramaphosa era is that he is president during a time of a crisis: a fragile economy strangled by blackouts, a failing state, collapsing SOEs, rising criminality and disorder, and a crippling cost of living.

In his state of the nation address he sought to convey a sense of being in touch with the unfolding crisis. While a good part of the speech was dedicated to measures aimed at resolving the energy crisis, he also went to great lengths to spell out the unfolding and deepening crisis at Transnet, which has cost the fiscus and the mining companies billions of rand in taxes and revenue.

Curiously, he also announced that Gordhan would oversee the establishment of an SOC holding company, over and above the unbundling of Eskom into generation, transmission and distribution to introduce competition in the energy market.

This complex, costly separation of Eskom, which is staunchly opposed by the ruling party and its allies, is being undertaken without transparency on whether it is consistent with advice from the president’s SOC Advisory Council. Similarly, it remains unclear whether the establishment of the SOC holding company was the rationale of the advisory council or a ploy to implement the party’s conference resolutions that called for moving SOEs to line ministries and dismantling Gordhan’s department.

More concerning, we are also in the dark whether the myriad solutions being proposed for the many SOEs are the brainchild of the council.

In the circumstances, it is only reasonable that we ask the president to publish the council’s recommendations, as he has done with other reports. There should be no problem with sharing that — after all, most of these entities are monopolies.