Anthony Butler
15 September 2008
opinion
Johannesburg — AGE, ill-health, patent incompetence, and factional political loyalties together ensure that a majority of today's cabinet ministers will not serve in the next African National Congress (ANC) government.
Congress of South African Trade Unions general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi recently commented that just "20% or 30%" of current ministers are genuinely efficient "good fellows" worthy of retention.
Five factors have fuelled uncertainty about the composition of this substantially new cabinet.
First, we will not know until the conclusion of the ANC list process just who the state president will be.
As President Thabo Mbeki demonstrated to devastating effect, all promises are off once an individual is inaugurated as president. Key offices will be reserved to loyalists. Gullible upstarts in the youth leagues will not receive the rewards they have been anticipating.
With ANC president Jacob Zuma presumably in mind, the South African Communist Party (SACP) last week warned that the left too may be "used for the electoral campaign and then dumped, some individuals co-opted while the rest are marginalised".
Second, whereas Mbeki preferred by temperament to be surrounded by mediocrities, a new president will be able to draw upon a vastly expanded reservoir of talent.
Competition for the top jobs will be fierce. Competent if unexciting ministers such as Jeff Radebe and Zola Skweyiya were big Polokwane winners and will expect elevation to senior offices. Zweli Mkhize, Siphiwe Nyanda, and Max Sisulu have key national executive committee portfolios and may expect equivalent ministerial posts.
Provincial old hands from Gauteng and Limpopo, such as Mathole M otshekga and Collins Chabane, have established a claim to high national office. Resurrected cadres such as Mathews Phosa, Cyril Ramaphosa, and Valli Moosa might by virtue of seniority command prominent portfolios.
Some of these individuals may not make themselves available for anything other than the grandest offices. Others, such as Vavi -- but not apparently Blade Nzimande -- feel it would not be right to treat their current positions as a "conveyor belt" to the cabinet.
Third, the Polokwane resolutions have created institutional uncertainty about the number and character of cabinet positions. Naive proposals for departmental mergers and divisions have been advanced.
The SACP, in addition, has proposed to strengthen the cabinet cluster system by creating a "senior council" of super-ministers, to drive developmental programmes and to control ministerial and official corruption and patronage.
Fourth, while Luthuli House claims that education, health and criminal justice will be the government's priorities, capable and senior ANC leaders are shying away from these operationally complex and politically unrewarding domains. Ideologues with no managerial competency continue to tout themselves as appropriate ministers for major spending departments.
Fifth, uncertainty surrounds the key economic ministries. There is widespread unhappiness with what is called "treasury power" but little indication that the structural causes of this institutional domination have been properly understood.
The treasury combines multiple roles -- economic policy making, public expenditure control and strategic policy co-ordination -- that can be institutionally disentangled only with great difficulty.
Financial management always exists in some tension with overarching developmental planning, strategic thinking, and information sharing. This problem, however, should be addressed by reducing the asymmetries of capacity between departments and the treasury, and by using more creative cross-cutting budgets -- and not by watering down the culture of financial justification that has been painstakingly built up.
Whatever powers are ostensibly devolved to a new planning institution in the Presidency, the finance minister will need full presidential backing in order to veto the unjustified resource demands that will continue to flood in from ministers and directors-general hunting in packs.
Imagining an ideal cabinet, unfortunately, is like selecting a fantasy football team. In the real world, the players expend most of their energies fighting in the dressing room. And the new manager may not be the person one has been expecting.
Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.
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