Stirred, not shaken, is perhaps the best way to describe the Cabinet. Although there has been a shuffling of portfolios, key ministers from the former Cabinet remain in the national executive and many of the government’s policies and programmes are going to remain essentially unchanged, other than for degrees of emphasis.
But what some of the new appointments do indicate that a significantly different shift in political attitudes may take place in the government and the ruling African National Congress.
The one criticism that President Thabo Mbeki has repeatedly faced during his time in office, both as president of the ANC and of South Africa, has been that he has no popular support in the organisation. His critics have often maintained that he owes his position to his skills as a shrewd politician, able to intimidate and sideline his opponents and build power blocs based on personal loyalties and patronage.
With his political credibility and strength at a high point, Mbeki has been able to deploy a second strategy often used by the ANC when dealing with differences in its ranks — accommodate them all.
To date, Mbeki has been viewed as stamping out all dissent in the ranks of the ANC in an attempt to impose a ”uniform think” on the organisation while it made the transition from a radical liberation movement to a social democratic government. Members of the South African Communist Party and radical socialist thinkers in the ANC — the independent left in the organisation — who vociferously objected to the government’s conservative economic policies and other independent thinkers, were allegedly in the firing line.
The appointment of Pallo Jordan, who was seen to be a victim of this policy of ”uniform think” is an overture to the independent ”left” in the ANC which has been feeling battered and bruised. While commentators ascribe the appointment to Jordan’s intellect and popularity, the ANC is not short of leaders with these characteristics.
However, Jordan has always been a symbol of independent and critical thought in the ANC — and of the organisation’s ability to accommodate internal debate. This role was thrust on him when he was detained by the ANC’s internal security department during exile and because, while he was widely perceived to be a Marxist intellectual, he stayed out of the SACP because of political and ideological differences with the party. Jordan has been appointed Arts and Culture Minister.
The return of Derek Hanekom to the Cabinet, as Deputy Minister for Science and Technology, is an overture to the ”white left”, those anti-apartheid activists who have felt slighted and left out of the new South Africa in which Mbeki has asserted black, in general, and African leadership in particular.
As a liberation movement, the ANC has always built broad, inclusive political fronts, designed to isolate its chief opponents. This strategy explains the continued inclusion of the Azanian People’s Organisation in the Cabinet and the president’s (initially half-hearted and now failed) efforts to keep the Inkatha Freedom Party in its ranks.
And, although the New National Party may not bring any significant support to the ANC in terms of the minority groups that it claims to represent, it remains a significant trophy for the ANC-dominated government. Its participation in the national government is an indication to minority groups that the ANC still considers them an important constituency. For the international community, the inclusion of the party of apartheid South Africa in the national government is a symbol of the continued political stability of the country.
In appointing the Cabinet, Mbeki has also fallen back on another well-established ANC tradition. The organisation never publicly punishes its officials who fail, a throwback to its time as a liberation movement when it needed to maintain a united front at all costs. Rather, it tries to redeploy people to positions where they can do less damage — or it surrounds them with individuals who can repair and contain their weaknesses.
So, although there have been loud calls for Mbeki to dismiss unpopular Cabinet members such as the Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the president is more likely to look at ways of dealing with the controversy around her without removing her from her post.
In this case he has appointed Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge as the new Deputy Minister of Health. The former deputy defence minister is well liked by groups such as the Treatment Action Campaign, which has been vehemently critical of the way Tshabalala-Msimang has dealt with South Africa’s Aids epidemic.
Former Eastern Cape premier Makhenkesi Stofile, for example, has been made Minister of Sport. Although the Eastern Cape was an exceptionally poor province, with a weak and bloated civil service from the start, Stofile managed it so badly that national government had to step in and send in a team to try to sort out its administration and its finances.
Part of the problem for the ANC in the Eastern Cape is that the organisation has been wracked by in-fighting. Stofile’s main rival in the province is Mluleki George, who has been promoted from chair of Parliament’s safety and security committee to Deputy Minister of Defence. What Mbeki has effectively done is remove the two fighting elephants from the Eastern Cape, in the hope that the grass will grow in the province.
However, as both are stalwarts of the ANC in a province considered the heartland of the organisation, they were lured away from the province, rather than driven from office — as is the culture in the organisation.
This gently-gently approach is perhaps also more subtly at work with the re-appointment of Deputy President Jacob Zuma to his position.
Allegations that Zuma was involved in corruption in the country’s multibillion-rand arms deal did little to detract from his popular support during the elections. In any event, he is not facing any formal charges and is unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future. The bottom-line is that no matter the conventional wisdom, the ANC and Mbeki are under no immediate pressure to tackle Zuma. As a result, the president can bide his time to consider how best to deal with Zuma, a senior ANC figure with popular support inside and outside the organisation.
One theory is that the time will be used to establish Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the next deputy president — or possibly even president — of the country. By promoting women leaders in his Cabinet and the provinces, Mbeki has prepared the country for senior women leaders.
More to the point, Dlamini-Zuma has been given two deputies — Aziz Pahad and Sue van der Merwe — to help her with her duties. This will leave the foreign minister more time to build her popular profile both inside and outside the country and secure her already high status in the ANC.
On SAfm on Thursday morning, Mo Shaik, a close confidant of Zuma, called in to deny furiously the theory that the foreign affairs minister was being set up to become an alternative to the deputy president.
As the Cabinet becomes more inclusive of political views in the ANC, Mbeki is likely to become more of a statesman. Rather than fight a corner, he is likely to adopt a style of leadership in the ANC more closely associated with the late Oliver Tambo, who kept the organisation together through all its years in exile.
However, Mbeki is also likely to be keeping his eye on the next ANC national conference, when the leadership he would like to leave in place at the end of his second term must secure the approval of the organisation. This also leaves open the possibility that he may be considering another shuffle of the Cabinet later in his term, when he may put in place the team that will follow him.