/ 9 July 2013

Another possible Cabinet reshuffle for Zuma?

President Jacob Zuma.
President Jacob Zuma.

If he shuffles ministers around, it would be a fourth in his presidency since 2009.

With only a few months left before the 2014 general elections, Zuma’s administration is under pressure to prove that it is serious about fighting corruption and accelerating service delivery.

Zuma, while trying to maintain the complex balance between contending ANC interests ahead of the elections, has also been under pressure to crack the whip on underperforming ministers.

According to sources within the ANC and government, a number of ministers are expected to be booted out. 

Meanwhile, other government sources have said Zuma will be announcing the new director of public prosecutions and head of the Special Investigating Unit.

Zuma under pressure
Zuma has been under pressure to announce a head of public prosecutions after the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution filed papers in the Constitutional Court last week, asking it to declare that Zuma has failed in his constitutional obligation to appoint a prosecutions chief "diligently and without delay".

In an affidavit by the executive secretary of the council, Parmananda Naidoo, the Constitutional Court was asked to direct Zuma to appoint a prosecutions chief within a month of an order being made by the court.

"The president has, for more than nearly nine months, failed to fulfil his constitutional obligations under section 179 of the Constitution to appoint a national director of public prosecutions," Naidoo claims.

In October last year, the Constitutional Court declared Zuma's appointment of Menzi Simelane as national director of public prosecutions invalid. The court heard an application by the Democratic Alliance to confirm a Supreme Court of Appeal ruling that the decision to employ Simelane was invalid.