f President Cyril Ramaphosa, Photo: Supplied
Close allies of President Cyril Ramaphosa were blindsided by his announcement on Thursday night that he would appoint a minister of electricity in his office, who would be responsible for energy recovery.
Clashes between senior ministers Pravin Gordhan and Gwede Mantashe have crippled efforts to manage the energy crisis which has battered the economy and now threatens food security.
The Mail & Guardian spoke to at least three ministers in Ramaphosa’s inner circle on the sidelines of Thursday’s State of the Nation address who were taken aback by the announcement.
According to the cabinet ministers, they had expected Ramaphosa to announce that power utility Eskom would be returned to the ministry of mineral resources and energy — under Mantashe — as resolved at the ANC December elective conference.
Instead, Ramaphosa changed tactics and announced that Eskom would remain under Gordhan’s public enterprises portfolio, alongside the new ministry in his office.
The M&G recently reported that, during a recent meeting, national executive committee (NEC) members had criticised Ramaphosa for allowing the two ministers to continue to frustrate efforts to resolve the electricity crisis. The NEC members are said to have been scathing about the party president letting Mantashe and Gordhan produce contradictory reports about the crisis.
It is understood that while Mantashe — the more popular leader in the party — predicted that Eskom would recover within 6 to 12 months, Gordhan projected that only in 2026 would the country have a stable energy supply.
The growing tension between the two ministers, who have both been integral to Ramaphosa’s ANC presidency, is said to partly have been the reason behind Ramaphosa creating an electricity minister in the presidency.
Some ANC leaders are saying the decision would also effectively neutralise the role of the deputy president who will be responsible for the Eskom war room. Newly-elected ANC deputy president Paul Mashatile is expected to take over the same position in government from David Mabuza when Ramaphosa reconfigures his cabinet.
A high-ranking ANC member said Ramaphosa was repeating what former president Thabo Mbeki had done and, in fact, “intensifying it”.
“He is moving everything to his office and taking powers away from ministers. Thabo did that and it backfired. He is creating enemies. No one anticipated this move and it doesn’t make sense,” they said.
This suggests a fraught upcoming NEC meeting, when Ramaphosa will have to answer tough questions about his decision.
Ahead of the December elective conference, his detractors made the point that Ramaphosa had not championed the resolutions made at the previous conference in 2017, including those on the expansion of the South African Reserve Bank’s mandate and the expropriation of land without compensation.
By adding another minister before the much-anticipated reshuffle, Ramaphosa has also contradicted his own vow to make his cabinet leaner and more agile.
The president of the ANC’s alliance partner Cosatu, Zingiswa Losi, said the labour federation had been clueless about the announcement. She said Cosatu wanted to understand the president’s intentions and objectives around the decision.
“We have the minister of monitoring and evaluation, you have a deputy minister there, if you really needed somebody who’s going to be focusing on whether the challenges that we are facing, the plans that we’ve put to address those challenges, are really implemented, then monitoring and evaluation should be the correct ministry to make that assessment,” Losi said.
“Therefore, the president could even have given it maybe to the deputy minister, or given it to those that are already in the presidency who are technical experts, who are currently driving the just energy transition. So, we’re not quite sure exactly what that ministry is going to be doing. Really, we still want to be taken into confidence. It was a shock to all of us.”
Losi said Cosatu would seek an audience with Ramaphosa to understand his reasoning, adding that the decision to create a new ministry did not make sense. The federation wanted to understand whether Ramaphosa was moving away from an ANC conference resolution to move Eskom to the energy department.
Meanwhile, Mantashe downplayed the impact of the decision on his own ministry, saying Eskom was not part of the energy department.
Mantashe said the president had not deviated from the ANC resolution for Eskom to be moved to the energy ministry adding that this question had been addressed in Ramaphosa’s Thursday speech when he added the rider that “the full packaging of the government will be announced in due course”.
“My imagination — I’m not the president — is that the packaging will come with the reshuffling exercise, which will be fully fledged. The ANC conference of which I remember, was resolved in a particular way,” Mantashe said.
“But the actual packaging of the government is the duty of the president. The president does that all the time. That’s why he added a rider that says there is going to be repackaging of the government in due course.”
Intimating that the minister of electricity would encroach on Gordhan’s portfolio and not his, Mantashe said he had no problem with the announcement as Eskom was never part of his portfolio.
“I cannot be unhappy with an announcement that does not impact the department. I would be worried if we were told you’re breaking mining and energy. That’s not what was announced.”
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