Positive signs from president’s selections

Commitment, hard work and integrity are the words used by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday night as he worked towards the conclusion of his speech.

He said them off the cuff as they were not included in the speech he was reading. These are encouraging words and it remains to be seen if they will be befitting of the appointed ministers. Some of the names are making a comeback to a slimmer executive that is expected to deliver.

Some names are being brought back to satisfy various ANC branches and factions, while some names deservedly didn’t make the cut, like a certain Bathabile Dlamini, despite her being the president of the ANC’s Women’s League.

The conversation can now move on in terms of the dead wood and bad hangover of Jacob Zuma-appointed ministers. We now expect to see ministers willing to bring much-needed services to the citizenry. One must look closely at the team of Tito Mboweni and Dr David Masondo – a strong team in the finance portfolio, given the capabilities of the two gentlemen.

Masondo has earned his stripes in the lecture room and is the head of the ANC political school. He was previously an MEC in Limpopo and his acute intellectual capability is widely respected.

Now, he must prove himself in a key portfolio that is also the heartbeat of South Africa. The rand welcomed the retaining of Mboweni and showed gains. This is encouraging for a country bedevilled by a depressed economy that continues to grow at a snail’s pace, year after year.

Ramaphosa has continued on the same trajectory some of his premiers across the country have done, by including young people and women in their executives. While this is well meaning, the governing party is now at a sensitive stage of this sixth administration, where incompetency and failing ministers or MECs won’t be tolerated any longer by the electorate.

Some of those appointed, based on their previous track records, like that of Masondo, are capable young men and women who have the task of working hard in fixing the image of a liberation party that has been at war with itself for the past 25 years.

Another one of these younger, new faces in an influential department, justice and correctional services, is Ronald Lamola, a lawyer who has been a vocal spokesperson of the ANC’s position on expropriation of land without compensation. The other minister with a monumental task is Thulas Nxesi.

He is now in charge of a department, employment and labour, that must, and fast, come up with credible answers and solutions to the forever sky-rocketing unemployment rate in the country. His is no easy task.

An unemployment rate of 27.6% is high for a country with 57 million people – so it would be better to see a more cohesive and integrated approach by Nxesi and other ministers, like Mboweni and Ebrahim Patel, the new minister of trade and industry. The appointment of Patricia de Lille is really nothing new. This is what the ANC exploits best as it seeks to be pretentiously inclusive.

Zuma did the same with Zanele Magwaza-Msibi of the National Freedom Party. All eyes will be on De Lille. Will she continue being the feisty politician we all know, or will she swing where the ANC wind blows? Cutting the cabinet from 36 to 28 is certainly a step in the right direction.

Now we wait and see if the so-called lean and mean executive doesn’t turn this step in the wrong direction.

• Moalusi is Gauteng convener for the SA National Editors’ Forum

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