PODCAST: Kgosientsho Ramokgopa’s hiding to nothing

Peter Bruce despairs of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s late night reshuffle in this latest edition of Podcasts from the Edge.

The new electricity minister, Prof Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, was just down the corridor running Ramaphosa’s infrastructure programme. If the Electricity State of Disaster he announced a month ago was so urgent why has he not had his man on the job already?

Sadly, Ramokgopa is a thoughtful and rather ponderous academic with little record of success in action. Energy minister Gwede Mantashe said when Ramaphosa first mentioned the new ministry that its occupant would be a “project manager”.

He meant it as an insult and now sandwiched between two heavyweights like Mantashe and Pravin Gordhan at public enterprises, the new minister is going to have a very hard time making anything happen without their permission.​

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