President Thabo Mbeki has opted for a minimalist Cabinet reshuffle after the promotion of minister of minerals and energy Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka to Deputy President, but he has sent some signals on the management of the economy.
The Department of Trade and Industry has hitherto been seen as the pilot agency for industrial development, and Mbeki has now expanded its political capacity by appointing two deputy ministers to replace Lindiwe Hendricks, who is to take over from Mlambo-Ngcuka at minerals and energy.
Rob Davies, the chair of Parliament’s portfolio committee on finance, and Elizabeth Thabethe, a former trade unionist who chairs the environmental affairs and tourism committee, both move to the union buildings.
There is a debate under way in the government about exactly which department should lead the drive for more rapid economic development, and where various technical functions should be located. Some argue that the national Treasury should bring its considerable resources to bear on broader development planning, and others suggest that the Presidency will play an expanded co-ordinating role, with the Department of Trade and Industry retaining most of its current functions.
The latest move suggests, at the very least, consolidation in trade and industry, but chief government spokesperson Joel Netshitenze, who is playing a central role in the debate about restructuring, bridles at the suggestion that the appointments are an augury of a more activist department.
“The [Department of Trade and Industry] has a role to play in terms of the first economy, and in terms of the second economy and its capacity to fulfil that role has been strengthened,” he says.
But, another senior official said the strengthening of the department could be seen as a sign that the national Treasury would not expand its remit to the broad restructuring of the economy, and would remain focused on macroeconomic management.
The fact that Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel stays put at the national Treasury will no doubt please markets who haven’t yet gotten to know his deputy, Jabu Moleketi, or Minister of Trade and Industry Mandisi Mpahlwa — the other candidate for the finance portfolio when Manuel does move on.
Neither of them is likely to have deviated from the steady fiscal approach that has characterised Manuel’s nine-year term, but both will now have more time to establish their credentials.
Hendricks is following precisely the same path as Mlambo-Ngcuka from trade and industry to minerals and energy, although her reputation, even within the Department of Trade and Industry, is much more mixed. The toughest political work in the minerals and energy sector is over, with the completion of the charter processes in mining and liquid fuels, as well as the introduction of new-order mining rights, but there is a good deal of enormously complex and sensitive work to be done bedding it down.