Three things — crime, economic growth and the energy crisis — will determine whether President Cyril Ramaphosa becomes a great success or a huge failure.
The cabinet shakeup that he presents on Monday night must help him fight crime, grow the economy and create opportunities for young graduates, and end load shedding.
For the past four years, Ramaphosa has been working with a “kitchen cabinet” in the Presidency to beef up capacity in key government entities hollowed out by 10 years of state capture.
These include beefing up the police with 10,000 new cops and reconfiguring the investigative capacity of the police especially to deal with white-collar crimes.
Over 1,000 new prosecutors have been hired at the National Prosecuting Authority along with a new head Advocate Shamilla Batohi.
All this while some of his ministers and senior ANC leaders were implicated in looting the state or helping Gupta-linked companies to steal from state companies.
Without a fresh electoral mandate, Ramaphosa cannot be expected to make wholesale changes to the cabinet.
Even if he wanted to, he doesn’t have a rich pool to fish from.
Over 90% of the cabinet will be selected from the 87-member ANC National Executive Committee and it is not made up of people who are fit for purpose.
The NEC is known to defend criminals and corrupt people, subscribes to left-wing economic policies that stifle economic growth and job creation and is frustrating efforts to transition from heavy reliance on coal-fired power stations to renewable energy sources.
Ramaphosa is in a game of poker with a terrible set of cards.
His immediate headache is to hire Paul Mashatile, a man he does not trust and who is more likely to dig his political grave than help him get rid of corrupt comrades in the government.
The deputy president will also become the leader of government business which gives him access to all government projects including the R300 billion recapitalisation of Eskom.
In the ANC, Mashatile is now the chairperson of the deployment committee, another influential position that means he decides who gets deployed in various state entities.
Another ANC strongman whose political muscle frustrates Ramaphosa is Gwede Mantashe, the ANC national chairman who is also the minister of minerals and energy.
Mantashe’s influence in the ANC NEC has led to the ANC bigwigs forcing Ramaphosa to relocate Eskom from public enterprise to Mantashe’s portfolio.
This is despite the coal fundamentalist being blamed for delaying the implementation of the R155 billion Just Energy Transition Framework.
Spare a thought for Ramaphosa. With all these headaches, it is going to be a tough task for him to be a great success.
Pictured above: President Cyril Ramaphosa
Image source: Twitter
