Ministers engage in turf wars amid power crisis and funding issues

With South Africa grappling with a number of issues that can preoccupy our ministers, it is appalling to find them engaged in turf wars because they want the spotlight.

Amid the energy crisis, Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan are apparently bickering about who should be the star player in solving load shedding.

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Instead of coming together to join hands in getting South Africans out of the power crisis, they are shying away from the mandate that President Cyril Ramaphosa has given them.

No help at all

They are out there denying each other the space to exercise their duties and this is not helping the country at all. This isn’t about their ability or capacity to do their jobs – they seem to be fighting to get their hands in the trough.

You can just imagine how they must have made it difficult for former Eskom boss André de Ruyter to do his job if this is how these ministers are treating each other. In fact, the electricity minister should not have been appointed in the first place.

Ramaphosa should have reshuffled poor performers and dealt with alleged ministerial corruption, cadre deployment and the mafia among Eskom staff, suppliers and customers.

On the other hand, Minister of Higher Education, Science and Innovation Blade Nzimande and his deputy minister, Buti Manamela, are also engaged in a petty war. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme is in a mess and students are in need of funding.

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Higher education is faced with many challenges and their energy ought to be channelled into finding solutions that will bring transformation to the student body of this country.

Battling for territory

There is no time for them to be battling for territory as if they are a mafia gang. They can’t be behaving as if they are in a competition.

What they have is a serious responsibility and it should be treated as such. If they have personal differences, they should leave them outside their government work because taxpayers are not interested in their squabbles but in how well they perform in their mandated duties.

All these ministers should be working as a collective. They should be functioning like a team that is serious about creating a better South Africa.

Unfortunately, all they do is sit in their air-conditioned offices nursing their egos and forgetting they have a lot on their tables.

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They have serious duties to carry out and their hands are too full for them to be minding meaningless issues at the expense of the country.

They must be reminded that they are there to serve the people and not to strive to be champions against their colleagues. They must be grown-ups – who are the leaders of this country.

Ministers’reality show

We don’t need a ministers’ reality show here. What we do need are ministers who devote their attention to the issues affecting this country.

Who does what and when shouldn’t be an issue, as long as what they are doing is helping the country. They can’t be embarking in unnecessary fights unless they are now tired of their jobs and want to be celebrities.

Ramaphosa should seriously sit down with his ministers and lay down some ground rules. Again, he should give his deputy ministers clear duties that will ensure frictionless relationships within departments.

In so doing, departments will function as they should, without ministers thinking they are bosses to each other.

As ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula pointed out, Ramaphosa needs to run his Cabinet and not the other way around. Unnecessary territorial battles shouldn’t be tolerated.

For what South Africans want is a functional country. And that can only happen if Cabinet is coordinated and in harmony. Seemingly, the cost of this bloated Cabinet is more than its monetary value.