What the scores mean:
A: Take a bow. You’re doing an excellent job
B: Good, but room for improvement
C: You’re OK, but that’s all we can say for you
D: Get your act together
E: Do yourself and the country a favour: resign
F: You’re fired
Kader Asmal
Minister of Education
Grade: A-
Surely the Cabinet’s most energetic and hands-on member, Minister of Education Kader Asmal ended the year on a high note by decisively intervening in the governance chaos at the country’s largest university, Unisa.
This followed months of turmoil in which Unisa’s recalcitrant council looked set to derail the university’s merger with Technikon SA and Vista University’s Distance Education Centre — part of the ambitious national higher education plan that aims to redress decades of apartheid inequalities and discrimination.
Asmal unveiled the plan in February with characteristically combative energy: “Implementation will begin immediately ” and the plan is “not up for further consultation and certainly not for negotiation “, he said. Negotiation promptly followed involving Vista University, which the plan says will merge overall with a range of other institutions.
Further battles certainly lie ahead for Asmal as the higher education revolution kicks in. Sources say the present 36 tertiary institutions will reduce to 20.
But the minister’s drive and grasp of his portfolio seem up to almost every challenge. Huge strides were made towards finalising Curriculum 2005, which will radically change modes of teaching and learning in schools. Asmal also cracked the whip over a number of underperforming provincial education departments. In September he warned that the national government might use constitutional measures to take over certain provincial functions if the provinces did not clean up their acts. Prime offenders are the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Province, where Asmal identified a lack of any work ethic.
The minister has been busily partnering his labour counterpart, Membathisi Mdadlana, in this year’s launch of the Human Resources Development Strategy, a massive undertaking to address the country’s poverty, unemployment, skills shortage and poor educational levels. But education and labour will have to work seamlessly together if the strategy is to bear fruit — and insiders question whether this is happening effectively enough.
One blot on Asmal’s copybook remains adult education, especially literacy. One in two adults cannot read or write, but last year’s rousing launch of the South African National Literacy Initiative has been a damp squib because of petty political infighting. The numbers of trainers and adults enrolled in literacy programmes remain light years short of the targets Asmal set at the launch.
Ngconde Balfour
Minister of Sport and Recreation
Grade: C
As usual, any debate on how the sports minister has fared during the year gets tied up on what his role should be — and whether there should be such a ministry at all. Given that there is and Balfour has the post, he is not doing too bad a job — although he often seems to speak first and think later.
Balfour’s main brief is to transform sport, and he continues to berate sports bodies that drag their heels. Rugby and cricket are the main targets for his efforts to ensure more representative teams take the field for South Africa, and the policy is beginning to pay dividends. But Balfour cannot take all the credit for this, and his ill-advised sounding-off against some sports reporters for “racism ” undermined his cause. His intervention in the Indian Test debacle towards the end of the year showed he has grasped some of the nuances of world cricket, and was a marked improvement on his disastrous support for Hansie Cronje last year.
The genial “Mr Buffet ” scores highly for his interest in and support of grass-roots sports organisations, but he has shied away from decisive intervention in the most problematic sporting codes in the country. The Boxing Act saga dragged on aimlessly throughout the year and the government was strangely silent when top athletics officials were under fire.
But it is for his lack of action in soccer that Balfour drops from last year’s B+. His refusal to apportion blame for the Ellis Park tragedy, obfuscations on allegations of maladministration within the controlling bodies, and silence on calls for a public inquiry suggest Balfour fears antagonising anyone of importance in the country’s most popular game.
Mangosuthu Buthelezi
Minister of Home Affairs
Grade: C+
In the popular 1980s BBC satire on the British government, Yes Minister, minister Jim Hacker spends most of his time fighting his permanent secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby. The public spat between Buthelezi and his Director General Billy Masetlha, extensively covered in the media this year, has some of the same features.
The difference is that the Hacker-Appleby conflict was about political versus bureaucratic power. Buthelezi, Inkatha Freedom Party president, seems caught up in an African National Congress power play aimed at cutting him and his special adviser, Mario Ambrosini, down to size. Ambrosini has long been viewed by the ANC as a stumbling block in its “otherwise cordial relationship ” with Buthelezi.
The result has been a further delay in immigration law that has been six years in the making and would give businesses wishing to recruit skilled foreigners some relief from the arbitrary discretion of home affairs officials. In his state of the nation address early this year, President Thabo Mbeki promised a swift remedy for private sector woes in this area.
The ANC’s strategy on Buthelezi is seen by some IFP insiders as similar to its approach to parliamentary public accounts committee chairperson Gavin Woods — marginalisation and harassment as an inducement to resign. Mbeki appointed Masetlha, a former ANC spook and head of the South African Secret Service, in the teeth of Buthelezi’s protests. The minister complains that the director general is a law unto himself, listing more than 60 complaints against him, and that he has refused to sign a fresh contract. Mbeki is said to have promised a resolution months ago, but the crisis has been allowed to simmer on.
The impasse over the immigration Bill is also seen in IFP circles as reflecting an unstated ANC agenda. Buthelezi has been willing to modify it to get it through Cabinet and Parliament — for example, by dropping a contested provision for an immigration service.
The government’s refusal to pass legislation according traditional leaders substantive powers has also provoked the IFP chief, but this is easier to defend. The ANC is caught in a genuine cleft stick: how to placate the chiefs without undermining their subjects’ constitutional right to elected local government.
The breakdown in relations between the minister and his department head has affected the morale of the department, which Buthelezi complains is struggling with disintegrating border-control systems and a staff shortage. In this he is ironically supported by Masetlha, who recently warned Parliament about a looming collapse due to underfunding of more than R100-million.
Thoko Didiza
Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs
Grade: C-
Didiza is a good agriculture minister who is on far better terms with white and black farmers than her predecessor, Derek Hanekom. But she is struggling in the difficult land-affairs portfolio.
When she took office Didiza made the mistake of buying claims by senior black agriculture officials that Hanekom had made crucial policy mistakes while minister. In reality, this was a cover for hard-line Africanism and personal ambition. The officials felt there were too many whites in the top positions they coveted.
The result was the shelving of key programmes initiated by Hanekom, most notably land redistribution projects and land tenure legislation, and a part-purge, part-protest exodus of senior whites, heightening existing capacity problems. Land affairs became a virtual adjunct of the agriculture department, with agriculture officials calling the policy shots. Hence the shift from land reform, as state assistance for the rural poor, to a new emphasis on promoting black commercial agriculture.
Spending on land redistribution has started to rise again after the policy moratorium, but more than two crucial years have been lost. New draft tenure legislation has at last been circulated for comment. True to Didiza’s pledge that she would transfer land in communal areas to “tribes and traditional African communities “, the legislation provides for the handover of land to chiefs. This is unlikely to find favour with the ANC’s millions of rural supporters, and may be vulnerable to challenge under the Constitution, which guarantees tenure security.
The status of traditional leaders is a politically explosive question, particularly given the history in KwaZulu-Natal. But sooner or later the ANC will have to face the fact that there can be no compromise between the land interests of traditional rulers and the rural masses, and no middle way between constitutional democracy and hereditary rule. Hanekom was steeling himself to talk turkey with the chiefs before the 1999 election. Under Didiza the inevitable showdown has been stalled.
Instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, Didiza would have done better to build on and adapt Hanekom’s flawed but basically sound legacy. She has done this in the area of land restitution — for those unjustly dispossessed under apartheid — with notable success, at least in terms of the number of claims finalised.
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Grade: C
Dlamini-Zuma is tough and determined, to the point of mulishness, and has a clear and creative mind when she applies it to policy matters. Foreign affairs is one of the government’s relative strengths, and for this she deserves credit.
This year she was at her most visible at the World Conference Against Racism, where she played an important part in drafting the compromise final declaration, aimed at keeping developed world waverers on board.
Foreign policy is essentially driven from the presidency. Dlamini-Zuma has, however, been active in supporting Nelson Mandela’s efforts to install a government of national unity in Burundi. The possible involvement of Mbeki in a Middle East peace initiative also reflects much behind-the-scenes work by her diplomats.
Zuma is a vocal Third World nationalist, but understands the need for healthy relations with the developed world. The government’s response to the events of September 11 — condemning terrorism outright, cooperating with the United Nations but fighting shy of support for American military action — reflects this careful approach.
Her weakness has always been her high-handed and abrasive interpersonal style and her inability to get on with her senior officials. As health minister she found herself locked in a war to the finish with her director general, Olive Shisana. Her relationship with her first foreign affairs director general, Jackie Selebi, was a troubled one. Now Selebi’s successor, the able Sipho Pityana, is quitting for the private sector well before his contract is up. Insiders say she has become increasingly dictatorial in her new portfolio, does not listen to advice, tends to construe divergent views as insubordination and has created a climate that encourages sycophancy among officials. She has a reputation for running to the headmaster — she is close to Mbeki — for help in fighting her battles.
Dlamini-Zuma is also accused of neglecting her domestic responsibilities while constantly flitting around the world (or, in recent months, studying French in France). Insiders say she rarely attends meetings of the Cabinet committee on international relations and is distant from her department, which she hardly engages on policy matters and whose views she does not carry to the executive. Critics complain that departmental specialists have far less influence on policy than Mbeki’s confidants in the presidential office.
Alec Erwin
Minister of Trade and Industry
Grade: D
Apart from the European Union trade pact, a great personal achievement, Erwin has little to show for his term in office. In business circles he is Mr Respectable; he appears professional and reassuringly competent. Business is, arguably, soft on him because he is white, a trained economist and has a certain professorial gravitas.
South Africa still lacks anything resembling an industrial policy, the Achilles heel of the government’s economic restructuring programme. The spending controls are there, the tax system has become more and more efficient — but where is the coherent plan to get South African industry going? The government has instead placed excessive reliance on the offsets from the R66-billion arms deal and on attracting foreign direct investment through privatisation. Neither policy has borne much fruit.
There were promises in this year’s budget of incentives for strategic industrial projects, but it is too early to judge whether these can succeed where previous initiatives failed.
Schemes to foster small and medium-sized businesses have had negligible effect. Instead Erwin’s team has expended energy on grand projects such as the industrial development zone at Coega, which has turned out to be a disaster. Held out as the jewel of the industrial offsets accompanying the arms deal, it looks set to be a white elephant now that major investors have pulled out.
Erwin is said to have been initially sceptical about the arms deal, but he was seduced by the offsets and has become one of its most ardent defenders. One of three ministers wheeled in to challenge the parliamentary inquiry into the procurement, he was complicit in the executive’s attack this year on Parliament’s constitutional watchdog role and the principle of the separation of powers. Among other things, Erwin insisted that the state had nothing to do with secondary contracts — the source of most of the trouble. This contention was swept aside in the investigators’ report on the arms deal.
Erwin is an effective proponent of the hard sell, as he showed in international trade talks, and is said to have Mbeki’s ear. After accompanying the president on his state visit to Britain this year, he is said to have swung Cabinet towards its short-lived preference for greater competition in the telecommunications sphere, in the form of a third fixed-line telephone operator. What he has not yet shown is that he can run a ministry that is an effective support structure for industry and small business.
Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi
Minister of Public Service and Administration
Grade: B
How one assesses Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi depends on one’s ideological starting point. For the left, she is union-basher and the South African Communist Party top dog who has sold out to economic conservatives in the government. But if one’s concern is for better services to the people and more value for taxpayers’ rands, rather than jobs and lifelong job security for public servants, she is a tough minister with a clear vision. She rightly argues that reforming an inert and wasteful state bureaucracy has nothing to do with the government’s growth, employment and redistribution macroeconomic strategy.
Fraser-Moleketi inherited a public service pampered by a retrenchment moratorium and excessively generous wage awards under her predecessor, Zola Skweyiya; a gross imbalance between personnel and capital spending; an abundance of redundant posts; a wage system based on entitlement rather than performance; and a negotiating stance that encouraged the haemorrhage of skills to private business by favouring the lower-paid over managers. Some of this was a hangover from apartheid.
For three years on the trot, Fraser-Moleketi has faced down demands for above-inflation increases. In keeping with her drive to improve public service management, there is now far more focus on wages at the top than on “closing the apartheid wage gap “. This year saw the launch of the senior management service for managers at director level and above — in concept, an elite management echelon with its own esprit de corps on direct contract to the minister. The plan is to move towards performance-based pay and less cumbersome disciplinary and dismissal procedures at all levels.
Fraser-Moleketi has also been inching towards a deal with the unions that will allow her to transfer and, if necessary, retrench public servants who draw wages but have no function. The public service summit early this year was principally about winning labour’s agreement to talk through a restructuring framework, and a mid-December deadline was set for a deal. Fraser-Moleketi can be criticised for her painful circumspection in this area, but at least she knows where she wants to go.
Ordinary South Africans who wrestle every day with government bureaucrats can be excused for thinking that public service reform is an empty slogan. But this is a portfolio that needs tough leadership, and Fraser-Moleketi is at least moving in the right direction. Her insistence that working for an ANC government does not mean sheltered employment represents an important conceptual shift.
Ronnie Kasrils
Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry
Grade: A-
Taking his first Cabinet job in a portfolio entirely beyond his ken, Kasrils has developed into a busy and effective minister.
He was so determined to implement the government’s water programmes, particularly in rural areas, that he publicly instructed his Director General, Mike Muller, to contravene the Division of Revenue Act if delivery required it.
The government’s strategies have been hit by plenty of flak from the left, particularly over the breakdown of schemes and the privatisation of the water supply. But according to Kasrils, seven million people have been supplied with clean water since 1994, about half the backlog. And Muller says only 7% of water schemes suffer serious problems, insisting that some shortcomings are inevitable.
This year, partly in reaction to the cholera outbreak in KwaZulu-Natal, Kasrils turned his attention to South Africa’s enormous sanitation backlog. More than 18-million people in three million households lack adequate sanitation. In September he announced that the government had committed itself to clearing the backlog by 2010 and would mobilise about R360-million for this purpose.
The impossible task of supplying free basic water to all South Africans, in terms of an ANC local election pledge, also fell to Kasrils this year. In September he announced that 55% of South Africans, or 25-million people, now live in areas where municipalities are implementing the free basic water policy.
Kasrils’s ministry has notched up the government’s only privatisation success — in the sale of state forests — during a year when the policy all but fell to pieces. In the Eastern Cape, for example, a joint partnership in Singisi Forest Products involved a major investor and trust representing more than 100 small communities, and similar schemes have been announced in KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Province.
A romantic rebel by temperament, and a former ANC military intelligence chief, Kasrils is in some ways ill-suited to a portfolio delivering taps and toilets to the masses. His true nature surfaced this year in his high-profile joust with Jewish religious authorities over Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians. His statement that the fundamental cause of the conflict in the Middle East was Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the suppression of the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination showed he had not lost his taste for a good political fight.
The one serious drawback with Kasrils is that he still insists on supporting a bunch of French and Dutch thugs marshalled together under the name Arsenal Football Club.
Mosiuoa Lekota
Minister of Defence
Grade: B-
Once banished to the National Council of Provinces by the ANC’s national leadership, and seen as the non-Mbeki candidate for the party chair, Lekota has been fully rehabilitated and is now a dependable supporter of Mbeki.
Although much of the controversial R66-billion arms deal was negotiated before he became minister of defence, he has been at the forefront of the government’s attempts to counter allegations of impropriety and put the best possible spin on the benefits of the deal. As ANC chairperson, he was also a key mover in the New National Party’s decision to quit the Democratic Alliance.
After the publication of the arms inquiry report, Lekota announced that “there could have been no clearer vindication of the government’s integrity and of its decision and the process followed to acquire the weapons from the primary contractors whose bids were successful “. This is, of course, not an accurate reflection of the report. But his and other ministers’ massaging of the facts, combined with the skilful management of the parliamentary oversight process, is likely to draw a curtain over the arms investigation controversy.
His central role in negotiations for a partnership with the NNP high-lights the extent to which Lekota has won Mbeki’s confidence. The unity of coloured people and Africans, and the marginalisation of the Democratic Party, is a project dear to Mbeki’s heart.
Within the defence force, Lekota has spearheaded major changes. Personnel strength has been reduced from 99430 in 1997/8 to 77481 in September 2001, in line with the post-1994 plan to amalgamate different apartheid-era armies and then rationalise them. In February Lekota said South Africa’s defence posture is now “defensive as opposed to offensive “, and a number of military bases have been closed down. The defence force has also backed the government’s foreign policy in Africa, sending troops to Burundi, the Congo, Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea, and an adviser to the Comores. During the past five years the army has trained three motorised infantry battalions and two brigade headquarters in peacekeeping operations. Lekota is also working on a comprehensive regional defence pact, which he believes is important for foreign investment.
A major shortcoming remains systemic racism in the defence force, which clearly underlies the regular eruption of racial violence, including the fatal shooting of white officers at the Tempe base. Despite public bluster, this is a nettle neither Lekota nor his predecessor, Joe Modise, have dared to grasp.
Tony Leon
Leader of the Democratic Alliance
Grade: D+
A parallel between the ANC and the DA is the apparent impregnability of their leaders, whatever their mistakes. Although he has presided over the collapse of an alliance he himself touted as South Africa’s next government, Leon’s leadership seems unquestioned in the DA.
Instead of self-scrutiny, the DA has turned its guns outwards — on NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk. Its insistence that the DA is intact, and that only a handful of renegades will follow the unprincipled Van Schalkwyk into the wilderness, looks increasingly forlorn.
Looking at the options, one can perhaps understand this — the DA top dogs are for the most part a lack-lustre bunch. Leon is articulate, hard-working, a good parliamentarian, keeps a close eye on the performance of his troops, has an eye for political issues that can be turned to account — and above all, is charismatic.
But his charisma was in quite large measure based on his unbroken string of successes in elevating the Democratic Party from a 1% movement in 1994 to official opposition in 1999, and then expanding it towards the 20% mark by absorbing the NNP. The break-up of the DA has dented his aura of invincibility.
More than that, it has raised serious questions about his political judgement. His DP colleagues were willing to forgive his 1999 “fight-back ” campaign because it ate into the NNP’s white electoral base, averting their gaze from the longer-term cost in terms of black perceptions. They were willing to accept a marriage of convenience with the “unprincipled ” Van Schalkwyk last year. But the numerical gains have now substantially unravelled, unless the DA manages to hold on to most of its public representatives and electoral base. By handing out plum government jobs to NNP loyalists, the ANC is doing all it can to present its new partner as the right option for upwardly mobile politicians.
Leon saw the Peter Marais vote-rigging saga, and Van Schalkwyk’s support for Marais, as an opportunity to present himself and his party as uncompromising exponents of clean government. In the process, he lost sight of Van Schalkwyk’s strategic options. The latter’s horse-trade with the ANC — a partnership for floor-crossing legislation — caught the DA leader with his tailored trousers round his ankles.
The management of the Marais/Van Schalkwyk affair was centralised in a small DP coterie at national level, enhancing perceptions of an imperial leadership style. The expulsion of the coloured Marais for what many perceived as a peccadillo carried unintended racial overtones.
Leon has tried to reach out to black voters this year through, for example, his “day in the life ” campaign and party rallies on political holidays. But he is too remote from the townships to strike the right note — his “vibes ” are all wrong. His economic liberalism and abrasive anti-union stance can have no appeal for the mass of ordinary black people. Even his own black lieutenants admit to a racial/cultural divide in the party.
Journalists are regularly told of the rising black leaders in the DP’s youth wing. They must start coming through.
Penuell Maduna
Minister of Justice and Consitutional Development
Grade: D-
South Africa’s most bumptious minister has had a relatively controversy-free year. He branded critics of the arms deal “racists ” and suggested Catholic priests should pass on confessions of a criminal nature to the authorities. Otherwise, he appears to be learning to hold his tongue.
There is not much else of a positive nature that can be said of Maduna’s performance in this crucial portfolio. The auditor general’s discovery of widespread spending irregularities in justice was particularly embarrassing for a portfolio supposed to be so short of funds. Now it looks as if reckless spending is a contributory factor.
The justice system remains in poor shape and has quite possibly deteriorated. There is an endemic belief among judges and lawyers that the system has not improved and is not going to. There is no clear direction from Maduna and morale in his department and in the courts is low.
One of the most important tasks confronting him is the transformation of the Bench. Obviously the Judicial Service Commission makes the appointments, but Maduna’s team should have developed a coherent set of policies and programmes to help train new and aspirant judges — particularly women and blacks. Even Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson has recently admitted that the pool of such judges is diminishing. Yet what has the department done to help develop a new generation of post-1994 judges?
Maduna has incurred considerable criticism this year for his proposed Legal Practice Bill, which originally planned to regulate the legal industry and effectively bring lawyers — including the Bar — under state control. The Bar is an independent institution which has traditionally fed the Bench, so any tampering with its independence could be perceived as having an effect on the independence of the judiciary. To his credit, Maduna has listened to his critics and agreed to modify the legislation.
In some peripheral areas, Maduna’s department appears to be making headway. The alternative justice programme, which aims to shift the burden from the courts, involves magistrates and prosecutors referring less serious cases to arbitrations between victim and offender, which are run by community-based organisations. The pilot programme appears to have been a great success.
The department has also tried to address backlogs in the courts with additional court sessions. None of which is really enough. Maduna has an unenviable task, but it has always been unclear why, after his dismal performance in minerals and energy, he was given still another ministry.
Trevor Manuel
Minister of Finance
Grade: B
Whether or not one likes the government’s conservative economic strategy, Trevor Manuel has to be admired for sticking to it. Because it has not yielded the desired results in terms of investment, growth and employment creation, he and the Cabinet have come under mounting pressure from the left flank of the ruling alliance to water it down.
Manuel has soldiered on grimly through a nightmare experiment: the imposition of an essentially Thatcherite economic programme on a country afflicted by a massive wealth gap and falling formal employment. The government has relied on the patience and endurance of the majority of the electorate, which cannot continue forever.
The foreign investment promised in exchange for the sacrifices required by government’s programme of fiscal austerity has yet to materialise. Instead the value of the currency has been decimated, in part because of the exodus of South African companies abroad. Thankfully, Manuel has clamped down on this.
The left pictures him as an inflexible economic czar and his department as a band of bean-counting technocrats who are stifling development, but he is doing what Mbeki wants him to do. He is tough and clear-minded, but also arrogant. He is dismissive of even reasoned criticism from the left, and blind to alternative approaches.
Run by Maria Ramos, the finance department is one of the government’s most efficient and commands respect in the financial community. Its rolling budget planning system, the medium-term expenditure framework, continues to operate seamlessly. Much of the credit for the budget performance has to go the South African Revenue Service, which under Pravin Gordhan grows more efficient by the day. The criticism is that the government is spending too little too slowly, bringing it within reach of a budget surplus.
Manuel andl his team have brought unprecedented stabilityl to monetary policy, using the device of inflation targeting. Again, the perception is that the reins are held too tightly and that interest rates are too low.
To Manuel’s credit it has emerged that he was one of the ministers who did not favour the R66-billion arms deal. As reported in the Mail & Guardian, his department drew up a feasibility study in 1999 warning of the hidden financial costs associated with a deal in which hardware is to be paid for in rands. His advice fell on deaf ears.
Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri
Minister of Communications
Grade: E+
Matsepe-Casaburri has notched up a few successes this year, including her promotion of universal access to information and communication technologies. There has been an impressive roll-out in poor and rural areas, not least through the extension of phone services and the launch of multi-purpose community centres. And there have been smaller victories, such as the restoration of the country’s domain name, South Africa.com.
That said, the minister has failed in a spectacular and embarrassing fashion in her primary responsibility — setting policy to guide far-reaching changes in South Africa’s telecommunications and information technology infrastructure. In May the gates will be thrown open to competition when Telkom’s monopoly expires. With this will go the restructuring of governmentlltelecoms interests held directly or indirectly in Telkom, Transnet’s Transtel, Eskom’s Esitel, MTN, Vodacom and signal distributor Sentech.
Not only is the telecommunications/information technology sector a major driver of the economy, but investor confidence and the government’s revenue base are also at stake. Continual delays in the Telkom listing means a budgeted privatisation dividend of R18-billion will not materialise this financial year. And the serial policy zig-zags, now the hallmark of Matsepe-Casaburri’s department, have done more than just about any other domestic event to foster investor uncertainty.
The minister got off to a bad start this year when she and Cell C were challenged in court by losing cellphone licence bidder Nextcom, claiming impropriety in the licence award. Matsepe-Casaburri may have been saved great embarrassment only by an out-of-court settlement between Cell C and Nextcom.
Early this year, the minister published her policy guidelines, including provision for one new fixed-line operator. By mid-year, apparently after intervention from the Department of Trade and Industry at Cabinet’s behest, a new policy was unveiled, this time envisaging two new competitors to Telkom. There was an immediate outcry from industry, and Telkom, Vodacom and MTN shares, in which government has a stake, came under pressure.
In the end Matsepe-Casaburri reverted to the single-competitor scenario, but with new uncertainties. The pieces were picked up by Parliament’s communications committee, which introduced other uncertainties. It now seems unlikely that the licensing of the second fixed-line operator will be on schedule or that there will be investor interest on the required scale.
Mitigating factors include trade and industry’s intrusion on Matsepe-Casaburri’s turf and unbearable pressure brought by industry players, most notably Telkom. But the conclusion must be that she is a weak minister, unable to steer a clear course.
Thabo Mbeki
President
Grade: D+
‘Such an intelligent man, and yet so insecure, ” was one government communicator’s comment on Mbeki. Some inner uncertainty seems to explain the inexplicable gaffes of a man who in many ways is a good leader.
Mbeki has continued to steer the ship of state through turbulent economic waters this year. Despite the plummeting rand and disappointing growth, the country might be far worse off without his tough economic stewardship. The government may be overly stringent on inflation and the deficit, but if it has erred, it has erred on the right side. The trade unions criticise his “home-grown structural adjustment programme “. But that is precisely his purpose — he is a nationalist who does not want control of the economy to fall into foreign hands.
Nor are the unions entirely fair in accusing Mbeki of exacerbating poverty and unemployment by giving free rein to the market. Like modern European social democrats, he does not see state assets as central to achieving social goals. But this year’s budget had a much more Keynesian feel, with a significant increase in capital spending.
At the same time, it is undeniable that the growth, employment and redistribution strategy has not attracted significant foreign investment, which this year stood at its lowest level since 1993. Mbeki tends to dismiss labour’s economic remedies as infantile radicalism, and his perspective informed the ANC national executive’s denunciation of “ultra-leftists ” and “counter-revolutionaries ” in the unions. Given the stagnation of the economy, and the need to stimulate domestic investment, he could be more open-minded.
Economic autarky is also a major theme of Mbeki’s foreign policy, which revolves around a campaign for a more equitable world order, particularly as it affects Africa. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development, launched this year, is centrally about a fairer trade and investment dispensation for the continent. It has been sidelined by a deepening world recession and the focus on terrorism post-September 11, but that does not mean he is wrong to pursue it. He is often accused of spending too much time abroad speaking for the Third World. But he believes South Africa’s economic interests are inseparable from those of the broad “South “.
Mbeki’s insecure and intolerant side surfaced in two incidents this year that hurt him more in the eyes of the black elite — his primary constituency — than anything else he has done as president: his public humiliation of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the televised “coup plot ” claims against three black business leaders. The plot allegations were made by notable losbek Steve Tshwete. But he is a senior Cabinet minister, close to Mbeki, who can only have reflected the climate in presidential circles. It coincided with Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s sudden and unsolicited announcement, apparently under pressure, that he had no ambitions on the ANC leadership.
A kind of racial insecurity also seems to underpin Mbeki’s most signal failure as president — on HIV/Aids. He constantly minimises the threat posed by the disease; is prone — ironically — to “ultra-left ” conspiracy theories on the infection as the work of the CIA or greedy pharmaceutical companies; and is obsessed with the toxicity of anti-retroviral drugs. He apparently thinks that to admit the rampancy of the disease, or its viral causation, entails a concession to racists. Hence the government’s attacks on the credibility of the Medical Research Council report, which identified Aids as the biggest killer of South Africans. Its foot-dragging on the rollout of antiretrovirals has its deepest roots in his classic “denialist ” view that Aids drugs do more harm than good.
His Aids stance has deeply dented him abroad and overshadows his advocacy of Third World economic interests. A New York Times journalist recently told the M&G that he is known even in small-town United States as “the African leader with funny views on Aids”. If a threat to his leadership does arise, it will come not from plotters, but from popular disillusionment with government Aids policies.
Mbeki deserves credit for maintaining South Africa’s political and economic macro-stability. But his obduracy on South Africa’s most pressing crisis raises grave questions about his judgement, and eclipses his achievements in other areas.
Mbembathisi Mdladlana
Minister of Labour
Grade: B-
Mdladlana is an interesting man who can be both irascible and jocular, and who combines elements of the teacher, preacher and trade unionist. Before being appointed to the Cabinet, he was a leader of the South African Democratic Teachers Union and did a spot of lay preaching. As befits a Christian pedagogue, he has preached skills development with a passion over the past year.
The first report of the Employ-ment Equity Act was released, finding slow employer movement towards compliance.
After some initial resistance, Mdladlana has won employer acceptance of skills development legislation. The department played a role in framing a wage subsidy policy aimed at giving incentives to employers who provide learnerships. Twenty-five sector education and training authorities are up and running, although only 1 000 people are in learnerships this year, compared with the department’s target of 3 000. Some employers regard the training levy as a tax and do not bother to reclaim it or train.
Reports on workers in vulnerable sectors were released in the second half of the year, recommending minimum conditions and wages for domestic and farm workers. These were fairly well received, but large questions remain over how basic conditions are to be enforced.
Unemployment insurance legislation, aimed at addressing the unemployment insurance fund’s chronic liquidity woes, was passed and is expected to become law next April.
On labour market matters, Mdladlana’s approach is to steer a middle course between organised business and labour, and to try to broker agreements. Two years of negotiations in the Millenium Labour Council culminated in an apparent deal this year involving concessions by business — notably on the right to strike over retrenchments — and unions on amendments to the Labour Relations Act.
However, big business felt its negotiators in the council were poorly mandated and sold it short. Further negotiations led to an amended agreement, and the legislation is expected to be passed in February next year.
This year was hailed as one of implementation for the labour department, an effective outfit under the able leadership of Director General Rams Ramashia. But sections of Mdladlana’s department, including the workers’ compensation office and the health and safety inspectorate, are understaffed, at a cost to delivery.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Minister of Minerals and Energy
Grade: A
The feisty wife of Bulelani Ngcuka once again gets the thumbs up for the efficient, robust way in which she has run this difficult portfolio. Mlambo-Ngcuka has shown herself tough on corruption, and flexible when it comes to key policy initiatives such as the controversial Minerals Development Bill.
She presided over a major clampdown on corrupt officials at the Central Energy Fund, an exercise that began at the end of last year. She cleaned out the boards of the state oil company, and set in motion an investigation that resulted in raids this year on the homes of Keith Kunene and Moses Moloele, both icons of the business community. Mlambo-Ngcuka has also pushed through a rationalisation and reshuffle of the rambling state oil empire, a project that scared her predecessors.
She is said to manage her team of civil servants well, being one of the few ministers to respect the boundaries between her department and the ministry. She is also known to steep herself in the detail of matters before her, and is prepared to sit through lengthy briefings and ask serious questions.
The minerals Bill has been a particularly trying piece of legislation, bringing her up against powerful vested interests in the mining industry. That said, the industry, chastened by its past, has been extremely coy about its criticism of the Bill, making it something of an awkward sparring partner.
The Bill seeks to give mineral rights to the state. The controversial part is how much discretion it gives to the minister when it comes to allocating and reshuffling mineral rights with the aim of advancing black empowerment.
After the mining industry kicked up a fuss over the first draft, which was poorly conceptualised, Mlambo-Ngcuka sent the team back to the drawing board. The revised draft addressed some of the mining industry’s fears. Nevertheless, it still accords a striking degree of discretionary power to the minister.
The process was fraught with controversy because of the symbolic significance of the legislation. But it at least showed the minister was prepared to listen and react to her critics.
Mohammed Valli Moosa
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
Grade: A
The Jan Smuts of Mbeki’s Cabinet is missed back home while he trots around the world securing international agreements. He has played a major role in some hefty deals this year, including the Kyoto Protocol against greenhouse gases, and is hectically busy putting all the pieces in place for next year’s World Summit on Sustainable Development.
But just when people start complaining he is spending too much time away, he pops up with some new development to delight local environmentalists: opening a transfrontier park, outlawing 4X4s from beaches, banning plastic shopping bags.
Not everybody is happy with him — the elephants sent off to Mozambique have made their way back to the Kruger Park, and unions complain the shopping bag ban will cost jobs. They forget he has succeeded in unlocking poverty alleviation funds to create thousands of jobs and that getting rid of poverty, in an environmentally friendly way, is the main thrust of the 2002 World Summit.
Hosting the summit is a daunting undertaking. If it lives up to its promises, it will bring into the heart of Gauteng the largest gathering of world leaders ever assembled. Valli Moosa has his work cut out for him making sure it works.
On the tourism front, securing Cheryl Carolus, until recently ambassador to the United Kingdom, as the new head of South African Tourism is a coup. Tourism figures dipped in the wake of the September 11 twin towers bombing, but marketers are capitalising on the aftermath by promoting South Africa as a safe venue.
This is the third straight A Valli Moosa has earned in the M&G‘s annual report card. He deserves them. He is energetic, enthusiastic and astute, and he still seems to be enjoying his job.
Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele
Minister of Housing
Grade:B
Mthembi-Mahanyele displays far more self-assurance nowadays and gives the impression that she is on top of her difficult portfolio.
Given her meagre budget allocations, she cannot really be blamed for the fact that shack settlements continue to mushroom across the country. Housing has been dropping steadily down the national agenda since the death of her predecessor, Joe Slovo.
Mthembi-Mahanyele says about five million South Africans have been given formal houses since 1994, which has created an asset base for the new home-owners of about R28-billion.
She has taken steps to improve the quality of homes and to protect consumers by requiring builders to register with the government. She has also promoted a savings-linked subsidy scheme to provide a housing incentive to people who save money to complement their subsidies. It has been criticised in some quarters as an abrogation of responsibility to the very poor, but it will at least have the effect of giving new home-owners pride and a stake in their new assets.
Mthembi-Mahanyele is promoting medium-density housing in urban areas and is looking at expanding rental stock. She could be criticised for her excessive emphasis in the early days on formal housing and for rejecting as “toilets in the veld ” the serviced sites many urban squatters really want and can afford. But since the Bredell land invasion there has been a marked shift towards greater allocations to urban provinces and an acceleration of the rapid land-release programme aimed at the urban homeless. These are sensible initiatives.
The housing crisis, however, is still very much with us — Mthembi-Mahanyele herself says it will take 15 to 20 years to remove “the scourge ” of informal housing in South Africa. The fact that the national housing department is not directly responsible for developing townships and providing houses — the responsibility of provinces and local authorities — does not help her. The national department sets policy and provides subsidies. The minister told Parliament that many provinces regularly underspend on their housing budgets.
Mthembi-Mahanyele disturbingly revealed in Parliament that while 322 638 houses were built or under construction in 1997/8, this declined to 170 883 last year. Levels of construction in the current financial year look set to remain the same.
The minister may be doing her best, but the country is not. Housing and land release should move up the government’s agenda.
Sydney Mufamadi
Minister of Provincial Affairs and Local Government
Grade: C+
Mufamadi is a decent man and a much shrewder politician than often realised, but his weakness — also evident in his dealings with the police as safety and security minister — is how soft he is on his underlings. His natural skills as a diplomat and negotiator would have been better employed in the foreign affairs portfolio, for which he was tipped pre-1999.
Saddled with a weak department under former homeland bureaucrat Zam Titus, he has tried to strengthen his ministry as a counterweight, rather than cracking the whip. He has imported two special advisers — including former Cape metro heavy-hitter Andrew Boraine — and appointed a panel under ex-Democratic Party politician Peter Leon to advise him on problems in the municipal sphere. This has not endeared him to his department and has exposed him to the complaint that he relies too much on whites. But he deserves credit for running political risks in a quest for solutions.
Local government is his main headache — and specifically the revamping of local government under the new municipal demarcation, and the difficulties of squaring traditional leadership and elected third-tier rule. In neither area has much progress been made this year, but Mufamadi can reasonably argue that he needs to understand hugely complex problems before tackling them.
The Leon report is understood to highlight the potentially disastrous implications of shifting delivery from local to district councils, a policy championed by ambitious Demarcation Board chief Michael Sutcliffe and slipped through Parliament unnoticed last year, to the fury of the finance department. Leon apparently finds that district councils lack the necessary infrastructure, management skills and resources to perform their new role, and that existing provision of water, electricity and other municipal services could be undermined.
With local government on its knees in many parts of South Africa, and little sign that it is fulfilling the development role assigned to it by the ANC, the clock is ticking for Mufamadi. The municipal tier remains one of the ANC’s major unfinished transformation projects, with municipal finances, rural local government and the rates regime unresolved areas. Next year he will have to start producing results.
Ben Ngubane
Minister of Arts, Culture Science and Technology
Grade: D (B for science, E for arts)
The scientists are ecstatic, the basket-weavers and pot-throwers are expectant, the museum curators are busy but the artists are in revolt. After a promising start with his visionary Arts and Culture Task Group policy process, Ngubane appears to be encountering problems in the hurly-burly of arts and culture, particularly since his return to this post after a two-year stint as premier of KwaZulu-Natal.
Critics point to the shifting balance of spending in his portfolio. Divided more or less equally in 1995 between science and technology on one hand, and arts and culture on the other, the balance this year is 60% and 37% respectively. His defenders draw attention to the fact that his R25-million budget, which must cater for nine provinces and six disciplines, has not increased in two years.
Science and technology boasts a flagship innovation fund and South Africa’s large telescope international astronomy project, and has been relatively free of poor decisions and interference. The theatre industry, by contrast, is a sad story of downsized theatres, closed mainstream performing arts companies, procrastination and poor departmental decisions. Nor has Ngubane’s department had much success with the film industry, unable to extricate it from its historical woes.
The heritage sector shows promise, though, with the allocation of funds to nine legacy projects that include a Samora Machel memorial in Mbuzini, a women’s monument at the Union Buildings, the Nelson Mandela museum in the Eastern Cape.
Crafts and cultural tourism have been punted for some time as one answer to the country’s dismal unemployment problem. But Ngubane’s department has been criticised for a lack of progress in delivering new jobs and income-generating opportunities in these and other much-vaunted cultural industries.
Dullah Omar
Minister of Transport
Grade: C+
Dullah Omar is a rather dull man, and has not developed much of a public profile since his appointment to Cabinet in 1999. But the transport department under his leadership is making some progress. His most daunting challenges are a critical backlog in roads development and maintenance, a decaying, crime-ridden and inefficient commuter rail system and a minibus taxi business that is violence-prone and a threat to road safety.
Omar has a consultative style and has shown a willingness to listen even to his critics. He has joined hands with all groups, including the DA, in the Western Cape to address the train crisis there. He has worked hard this year to drive the transformation of the taxi industry. The recapitalisation programme received a major boost when a new, inclusive taxi body was launched in September.
Most notable have been his efforts to upgrade the deteriorating rail transport system, further hit this year by a spate of accidents and a destructive commuter riot in Pretoria. He approved R400-million for the upgrading of Metrorail rolling stock and signalling equipment. About 100 stations have been improved. In addition, luxury trains have been introduced in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Omar also deserves praise for his ambitious bicycle transport initiative, Shova ka Lula (ride easy), aimed at helping disadvantaged communities.
However, little progress is being made in halting the serious deterioration of South Africa’s road system — more than 50% of the country’s roads are now regarded as “below the efficiency threshold “. It has been estimated that more than R15-billion a year for the next 10 years will be needed to keep the roads in shape, and that 20% of South Africa’s 700 000 annual road accidents are due to the “road environment “.
Omar admits there is “continued inadequate funding and a growing backlog in road maintenance and rehabilitation “, but seems unable to persuade the rest of the government to take this gathering crisis seriously.
Essop Pahad
Minister in the Office of the Presidency
Grade: D-
A major feature of the Mbeki presidency has been the drive, from the centre, to control the government and the ruling alliance. Dissent from the presidential line is rarely tolerated, with redeployment and marginalisation the price to pay.
There is no one politically more pivotal to this approach than Pahad. A long-standing friend and confidant of the president, he is his ears and eyes within the ANC parliamentary caucus and his political enforcer. As the president’s fixer, he played a key role in pulling the ANC into line on Parliament’s arms deal inquiry. Although easy to dismiss because of his combative and often crude public style, Pahad has emerged as a key figure in Mbeki’s inner circle and cannot be ignored.
He has some important line-function responsibilities, such as the government’s communication system, the gender desk and the Office of the Status of the Disabled, and has emerged as a committed spokesperson on gender and disability issues. He is also used as a political kite-flyer. An example was his recent speech in Parliament asserting that there would have to be free movement of labour in the region, a view out of synch with popular sentiment and official home-affairs policy.
Pahad often enters public debates or writes letters to the newspapers in a way that Mbeki cannot do — to the extent of defending the president’s problematic stance on HIV/Aids. His “troubleshooting ” was also evident in his silly and tasteless attack on the media at — of all things — an international banquet held in February by the relatively compliant Independent Newspapers group.
He is easy to dislike and doesn’t take kindly to criticism, and his perception of the media is a simple and unambiguous one — he believes it should serve the government. As the man ultimately in charge of government communications it should — but apparently does not — bother him that South African journalists hold him in such low regard.
Jeff Radebe
Minister of Public Enterprises
Grade:C+
It has been a bad year for privatisation, Radebe’s main responsibility. The major setback was the postponement of the flagship sell-off of Telkom, whose initial public offering was to form the bulk of the government’s target revenue of R18-billion from the sale of state assets this year. It was also supposed to signal the government’s seriousness about privatisation to investors. Other reverses were the postponement of the listing of the Airports Company of South Africa and a delay in the offloading of the state’s 24,5% stake in M-Cell. The government also pulled back from plans for private sector involvement in profitable Spoornet lines.
Investors had barely digested news of the Telkom delay when the Congress of South African Trade Unions staged a general strike over the privatisation strategy. Adverse market conditions, a lack of coordination between different arms of the government and a struggle to win over the left have dogged the strategy from the start.
But few of the problems can be blamed on Radebe, who is in charge of a process he often does not control. He is responsible for overall policy, but line ministries are in the driving seat on the actual sell-offs.
The mess over telecommunications policy illustrates this. The policy document, steered by the communications department, suddenly talked of licensing two new fixed-line operators, instead of one. There was speculation of inadequate communication between the various government departments involved and little clarity over precisely what the government wanted to achieve. The Department of Public Enterprises subtly signalled its sympathy for Telkom’s foreign shareholder, Thintana, that effectively threatened to offload its shares. Beyond signalling its dissatisfaction, there was little Radebe’s team could do.
Although he was left high and dry by his colleagues, Radebe showed considerable courage in taking on former Transnet managing director Saki Macozoma over the fiasco surrounding the appointment of Coleman Andrews at SAA, and the millions expended on consultants for the airline.
It is often argued that South Africa does not need a public enterprises ministry and that its functions should be absorbed by the various line ministries controlling state assets. There is a certain logic to this, particularly considering the amount of work that is actually done by consultants. That said, business people who have worked closely with the department say it is efficient, hardworking — and overstretched.
Radebe was put in his position by Mbeki because he is a leading member of the SACP. He has shown himself to be a sound, competent operator doing his best in a gruesome posting.
Stella Sigcau
Minister of Public Works
Grade: D+
Sigcau’s seven-year stint in the Cabinet seems more related to her Pondo royal blood and strong links to the Transkei, where she was prime minister in the late Eighties, than performance.
Some months ago she hit the headlines for letting a hut on her Eastern Cape property be used for the concoction of a secret herbal brew from peach leaves to fight HIV/Aids. Such publicity does not reflect well on a minister of state.
Formerly in charge of public enterprises, Sigcau inherited public works in 1999 after her predecessor, Jeff Radebe, had done much to clean it up. In a portfolio where it is difficult to stir controversy, she has avoided high-profile blapses with the help of her efficient and competent Director General, Thami Sokutu.
A key achievement has been the national public-works programme and, more importantly, the community-based public-works programme. Dubbed Letsema, this funded 981 projects and created 22 619 jobs through its R374-million budget. On Women’s Day, Sigcau announced that R142-million was earmarked for 42 projects to empower black and women contractors.
Among Sigcau’s odder announcements this year was a private-public sector partnership to repair and maintain 720 malfunctioning lifts in government-owned buildings. And this year the ministry’s R1-billion capital projects included a R34-million security upgrade at the president’s Cape Town residence after a homeless man broke in and helped himself to his wine collection.
The ability of public works to deliver remains shaky despite decentralisation of its workforce to provincial level and a cut in staff numbers by almost half. Fellow ministers have repeatedly expressed concern over the bad state of repair of state buildings, for which public works is responsible. This may explain much of the planned outsourcing and acquisition of strategic partners to handle the government’s property leasing and asset management.
Public works has a dreadful reputation for late payment of contractors to the government, but Sigcau has pledged to improve the meeting of payment deadlines by 50% by the end of next year. The sale of underused public properties and military bases has now picked up speed.
Lindiwe Nonceba Sisulu
Minister of Intelligence
Grade: C+
As she operates in the shadows, Sisulu’s performance in the intelligence portfolio is near-impossible to evaluate. But there is no doubting her intelligence, administrative talents and forcefulness.
Her predecessor, Joe Nhlanhla, was an ANC old-timer whose ministerial appointment, like that of Joe Modise and Alfred Nzo, was more a long-service award than a vote of confidence. His worsening incapacity through illness brought Sisulu into the Cabinet in February this year. This also enabled Mbeki to deal with Sisulu’s resentment at being promised the home affairs portfolio in 1999, and having it taken away days later to accommodate IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Indeed, Buthelezi’s supporters claimed the tortuous progress of his immigration Bill through Parliament was linked to a nexus between Sisulu and Aubrey Mokoena, chairperson of Parliament’s home affairs committee.
Sisulu, the private school-educated daughter of Walter Sisulu, has the right experience for South Africa’s chief spook. After joining Umkhonto weSizwe in 1977, she received military training with a special focus on intelligence. Post-1994, she served as chairperson of Parliament’s watchdog committee on intelligence.
She has made the right noises about what is required of her, highlighting in Parliament the critical need to gather intelligence of all kinds after the September 11 terror attack on the United States. But the claim of a coup plot against Mbeki raises questions about the coordination of intelligence activities in the government at large.
Intelligence is seen as an undeveloped function in South Africa. The department should ideally be a source of information to all ministries and other national interests, in the same way that the British MI6 is used by businesses for data on bids for international contracts, and the US National Security Agency monitors the activities of foreign intelligence agencies in acquiring corporate information. At a time when South Africa is trying to assert itself in the cut-throat international trade arena, such activities could be extremely useful.
The intelligence ministry is still in its infancy. On the fringes of Cabinet for several years, Sisulu finally has the chance to prove her mettle by developing this portfolio.
Ben Skosana
Minister of Correctional Services
Grade:C
Despite his virtual invisibility and alleged allergy to paperwork, IFP stalwart Skosana has notched up some successes this year. Against the prevalent “nail them and jail them ” attitudes, he has introduced a strong emphasis on rehabilitation in a