This is part two of our Cabinet report card. Click here to read part one
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Deputy President
Grade: B (2005 B)
Flight class: Jet set
If only the deputy president did not have to travel to do her work, she would get a straight A.
Mlambo-Ngcuka scored the big coup for government when she and Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge took charge of the government’s HIV and Aids comprehensive strategy from Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Mlambo-Ngcuka is head of the interministerial committee that aims to strengthen the implementation of the HIV and Aids programme. The committee has already performed many tasks that Tshabalala-Msimang had failed to, like starting consultation with civil society, reviewing the work of the South African National Aids Council and improving communication with the public and the media.
Mlambo-Ngcuka is also steward of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa. Her technical team has completed its report identifying scarce skills in the country and she has assembled some of the world’s best economic brains to define a South African growth path.
She must exercise a sense of proportion by ensuring that she is not perceived to lead an extravagant, reckless lifestyle at taxpayers’ expense when millions of poor South Africans can hardly afford a taxi fare. All in all, she is a competent manager we still need.
Mandisi Mpahlwa
Minister of Trade and Industry
Grade D (2005 AWOL)
Mpahlwa’s ascension to the full trade and industry portfolio 18 months ago was broadly welcomed, not least because everyone likes him. But in the past year, however, he has shown little sign of imposing his personal stamp.
Progress is stalled on too many fronts, from trade negotiation and reform of the Companies Act to development finance. The gritty business of bilateral and multilateral trade negotiation was once the department’s strong suit, and its small but effective team was highly regarded.
But in 2006 they have achieved almost nothing. Talks with Latin America slowed to almost a halt; the proposed deal with the United States was confirmed dead, and no real progress was made with India or China.
And in the higher-profile battle over the Doha round of the World Trade Organisation, South Africa ceded its developing world leadership to Brazil and India.
Worse, Mpahlwa, surely no protectionist, allowed himself to take the rap for the fiasco over import quotas on Chinese clothing and textiles.
On the plus side, he did cut tariffs on some steel imports to put pressure on the prices charged by the local monopolist Mittal Steel.
The deputy minister, Rob Davies, is leading efforts to develop an industrial policy suitable for a small economy in a globalised trading system. Is that because the minister is suspicious of government efforts to pick winners?
The department seems torn between increasing state support for nascent manufacturing industries and exposing them to the chill discipline of competition. If it does win the battle with the Treasury for targeted tax breaks and subsidies, however, it will be largely thanks to the Presidency.
Mpahlwa’s financial expertise was touted as a cure for unwieldy and underperforming development finance institutions, from the Industrial Development Corporation to small business financier Khula and the National Empowerment Fund, which seems to be recovering from its disastrous start, with R500-million in deals approved for funding in the year to March. Khula, however, has done little to justify itself.
Membathisi Mdladlana
Minister of Labour
Grade: D (2005 AWOL)
Last year, Labour Minister Mdladlana was one of the four ministers who were categorised as having gone AWOL.
This year, he’s improved. Mdladlana was appointed chair of the UN International Labour Organisation, an acknowledgement of South Africa’s labour laws. And he’s won kudos from the labour movement for resisting Cabinet efforts to amend labour laws, though he should be careful of playing to the gallery. There is a good case (acknowledged in labour circles) to be made for making our labour laws less cumbersome while not tampering with a floor of decent rights.
He also counts the establishment of the Beit Bridge Reception and Recruitment Centre as a high point of his year. It will receive 2Â 000 Zimbabwean deportees who are repatriated on a weekly basis from South Africa.
In November he launched a national skills project in Idutywa, Eastern Cape, to the tune of R1-billion. The project will benefit more than 300Â 000 people, in particular those in rural areas, with critical skills. He needs to ensure that the skills programme, including the laudable but cumbersome sector education and training authority system, begins to work at scale.
In all fairness, Mdladlana would have gotten a better symbol this year had it not been for the dismal performance of his department. His Director General, Vanguard Mkhosana, has not been an inspired appointment. The department’s audits have been qualified and it has a debilitating vacancy rate.
According to the department’s most recent annual report, more than 500 posts, including key positions in areas such as statistics, research, programme management, finance management and human resource management, remain unfilled.
Sydney Mufamadi
Minister of Provincial and Local Government
Grade C (2005 E+)
Undoubtedly Mufamadi’s biggest achievement this year was to stop the crisis in the Western Cape when the ANC threatened to use its provincial governing power to remove Democratic Alliance executive mayor Helen Zille from power. Under the guise of creating stability in the province, the ANC provincial government proposed to change the current mayoral system to an executive committee system, the effect of which would have seen the ANC gain more power and Zille losing her executive powers. Mufamadi intervened to strike a deal with Zille.
This year also saw fewer protests over service delivery in local government compared with the past two years. But this was the year that Khutsong burned in protest over Mufamadi’s redemarcation of certain municipalities.
Mufamadi was conspicuous by his absence and silence as he failed to engage the residents or their leaders.
Several measures were introduced by his department to improve the performance of local governments. These include the new competency guidelines regulating the employment of senior council managers. The guidelines spell out the basic qualifications and experience necessary in order to deal with some tendencies that include nepotism and the hiring of unqualified political cronies.
The department also substantially increased the salaries of councillors with the aim of attracting the best pool of talent from other competitive positions and to counter the brain drain from municipalities.
Mufamadi should move to reduce the number of provinces as some were not viable and others were creating unnecessary, extra, administrative costs. Mufamadi has been hinting at this for the past two years and it is time he moved on the issue.
Charles Nqakula
Minister of Safety and Security
Grade: F (2005 F)
Nqakula’s stint as Minister of Safety and Security has always been dominated by the uneasy relationship he has with the police National Commissioner, Jackie Selebi.
This year, that relationship took further strain as Nqakula again failed to show leadership. As the commissioner’s political head, he was too pre-occupied with ensuring lasting peace in Burundi to demand answers from Selebi.
It is disconcerting when the minister of safety and security asks if there is ”anyone” who has information that may convince him that there is something wrong with the national police commissioner having a relationship with an alleged international crime syndicate boss, especially one who then gets charged with the country’s most sensational murder.
In a country losing the perception war as far as turning the tide on crime is concerned, Nqakula’s handling of Selebi’s case has been a spectacular failure.
Nqakula has not been proactive; he has been all talk but little action.
In the wake of the Jeppestown killing of four police officers in July, Nqakula announced that he would be asking the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation to establish the reasons for such levels of crime. Not only has the South African public not been kept up to date as to whether that has happened, but it also showed lack of in-house capacity.
Then there was the arrogance.
Before the Selebi debacle, Nqakula had shown great insensitivity to victims of crimes. In a statement he would later describe as a throwaway remark, he said [about those who complain about crime]: ”They can continue to whinge until they’re blue in the face, they can continue to be as negative as they want to or they can simply leave this country so that all of the peace-loving South Africans, good South African people who want to make this a successful country, can continue with their work.”
Crime statistics show that crime is on the decline but there have been spikes in the new measuring period. But increasing numbers of South Africans feel unsafe in the streets and their homes.
Time to resign.
Essop Pahad
Minister in the Presidency
Grade B
Pahad deserves an A from his nemesis, the media, this year. Pahad negotiated a détente between home affairs and the media by securing a delay in parliamentary deliberations on the Film and Publications Amendment Bill.
The Home Affairs Department, concerned at the increasing availability of child pornography, drew up a dragnet of a Bill aimed, arguably, at the wrong target. The Bill, if passed, would make it impossible for the media to operate as all information of a sexual nature, and that which was held to incite violence or war, would have to be vetted by a panel of censors.
Pahad secured the stay, thereby averting a fight that would have been taken to the courts.
In addition, he also oversaw the appointment of the professional and affable Themba James Maseko as government spokesperson. Maseko’s hallmarks of engagement and dialogue augur well for better relations.
But the offices on women and children’s rights, run from his offices in the presidency, have never made the impact they should. He is a bullish supporter of youth politics and ended the year by launching a youth service volunteer programme. This is an effort to ”massify” the youth service and ensure that the Cabinet supports it. The jury’s out on the success of the youth service; and Pahad has failed miserably to secure political support from youth for his boss.
Pahad is an effective lobbyist for the rights of disabled people and continued this year to secure better services and policies.
By next year this time (when the ANC holds is national conference to elect a new leader) Pahad’s star would have waned with that of Mbeki’s. He has a year to shape a final political legacy that goes beyond that of Mbeki’s induna-in-chief.
Naledi Pandor
Minister of Education
Grade: D (2005 D)
For a minister with so sharp an intellect and so vivid a personality, Naledi Pandor continues to be puzzlingly ineffective where it most matters — a school system that is alarmingly dysfunctional for the majority.
This time last year, we urged Pandor more visibly to take control, but there has been little sign of that. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with the diagnoses she frequently provides of what is ailing the system. She told Parliament in May: ”Many young children are not learning to read and write, university students obtain degrees that are a dead end, and our institutions are not delivering the skills the country needs.”
Quite so, but it is therefore all the more curious that she keeps on radiating something less than all-out urgency. There was only one moment this year when it looked as though she might be stepping up a gear. Addressing the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) in May, she lambasted indifferent education bureaucracies at provincial and school district levels. In particular, ”Lacklustre attention to ensuring adequate numbers of teachers, to devising efficient LTSM [learning and teaching support materials] delivery systems, to achieving quality and success for all, can no longer be tolerated and excused.”
There was more in that vein, and it was thoroughly welcome: when provincial education departments do not perform, it scarcely matters what fine policies have been forged at the national level.
But Pandor’s NCOP speech stands out precisely because of its rarity, and as a result one has to wonder how seriously she is following up on its tough talk.
Given that access to school education is no longer the prime issue — our enrolment rates are very high — more concerted attention must focus on the quality of what happens in the classroom.
In other areas, there is either invisible or painfully slow movement. This year’s revelation that about 50% of undergraduates drop out without completing their tertiary studies suggests a massive malaise in higher education, but little government urgency is evident. Poor school preparation is clearly a major reason for the drop-out rate, yet a paltry R104-million (out of nearly R12-billion for higher education) was earmarked for academic development programmes at universities this year.
The ongoing scandal of official neglect, budgetary and otherwise, of adult literacy remains a blot on Pandor’s record, but might be mitigated when the ministerial report on adult basic education and training sees the light of day, apparently soon. And the huge R2-billion recapitalisation of further education and training colleges continues, though it is far too early to tell whether this will effectively achieve Pandor’s aim that the colleges double their current enrolment of about 400Â 000 and start meeting the needs of the government’s Jipsa skills-development programme.
But in the end it is the faltering health of the school system that must cause the greatest alarm, and ongoing stasis there explains the equivalent paralysis in Pandor’s grade between last year and now.
Jeff Radebe
Minister of Transport
Grade: C+ (2005 B)
The minister again catapulted the issue of public transport into the public domain by continuing his car-free days this year, an activity that highlights the deplorable condition of South Africa’s public transport system. Noting the ineffectiveness of the car-free days, commentators welcome his emphasis on improving public transportation but say that a longer-term solution is still missing. The political will and even the finances appear to be there, but the policies are lacking.
The Gautrain remains a sore point for those who believe that the budget allocated to the train could do more to improve public transport and prioritise resources into poorer communities.
Developing policies is the critical work of this department, which strangely spends only a small portion of its budget directly. Rather, it is a conduit for about 90% of its budget, which goes to institutions like Metrorail and towards bus subsidies in the provinces. It comes up with policies, but relies on others to implement them.
Taxi recapitalisation made slow progress this year and the timelines set by the department are increasingly symbolic. One of the key failings of the programme has been the lack of consultation with role players and efforts to understand the sector’s economic realities.
Radebe has been praised for making it more flexible. Previously 18- and 35-seater taxis were the only vehicles allowed under the programme, but new specifications allow for a wider range of taxis to be considered. He is downgraded this year because little progress has been made on this front.
Some in his department are said to view the minister as hands-off and distant and stakeholders vary in their experiences of how accessible he is. Perhaps because Radebe has higher ambitions, though he should use this portfolio to build his image.
But the Transport Indaba was welcomed by stakeholders as a platform to engage the department on a range of issues.
Lindiwe Sisulu
Minister of Housing
Grade A- (2005 A)
Sisulu is a highly regarded minister — observers in various sectors gave her a seven or eight out of 10. NGO workers, architects and policymakers describe her as clever, approachable, far-sighted and undaunted by the huge task of reducing South Africa’s backlog of 2,5-million houses.
The trouble is that the size of households has declined, greatly lengthening waiting lists. The government has built two million units in 12 years, a significant achievement. But it is not enough.
This year housing delivery was about 20% down on the figure of three years ago, a drop Sisulu ascribes to the fact that more attention is being paid to location and quality. Factors beyond her control, including skills and materials shortages, have undoubtedly played a role.
In May this year Sisulu did something truly visionary: she treated the urban poor as equal partners in housing delivery by signing an agreement with the Federation of the Urban Poor and Shack Dwellers International — while her predecessors had signed agreements only with the banks. She also prevailed on provincial housing ministers to make allocations for subsidies to the urban poor. She has a gift for slicing through the red tape that that entangles the government.
Sisulu dragged the banks to the boardroom, signing a R42-billion pledge to finance low-cost housing bonds. However, the deal has been stymied by a failure to agree on an acceptable risk-sharing model.
Her slum-clearance showpiece, the N2 Gateway project in Cape Town, was bold in concept but has degenerated into a nightmare. It is way behind schedule: she promised 22Â 000 units by February; to date just 705 units have been built with an expenditure overrun of R135-million. And there are unresolved questions over who will live in these houses: new migrants or old Cape Town residents?
Zola Skweyiya
Minister of Social Development
Grade: A (2005: C)
Recently, Skweyiya broke with the official ANC party line by calling for the urgent introduction of a basic income grant to counteract poverty. Skweyiya has also publicly urged South Africans to adopt orphans, called for more protection of vulnerable children and criticised the police for insensitivity to child abuse. He is reputed to be one of the ministers concerned with Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang’s ”abrasive” impact on the government’s HIV/Aids image, and to have backed her deputy, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.
Skweyiya has prioritised the impact of HIV/Aids, setting up a task team to investigate the possibility of a chronic illness grant after it became apparent that those recovering on antiretrovirals are left destitute, providing a perverse incentive for non-adherence to treatment.
Another commendable innovation was the introduction of a Child Protection Register, with the government legally compelled to update the list of those abused or suffering from nutritional diseases.
With 22Â 486 children raped last year, the register got off to a modest start in May with 13Â 228 names. But social workers are integral to such initiatives, and the department’s retention strategy appears to be failing. There are about 10Â 000 registered social workers, and many are emigrating.
In the administration of grants, long pay-out queues, arbitrarily cancelled grants and long waits for money persist.
The South African Social Services Agency (Sassa) became partially operational this year in Gauteng, the Western Cape and Northern Cape; other provinces have lagged behind because of inadequate infrastructure. About R1,5-billion of the government’s R57-billion welfare budget is lost annually to fraud and corruption.
Skweyiya announced that 43Â 705 public servants have been investigated for grant fraud, and the probe has been widened to include 400 000 members of the public. In June it was announced that only 650 of 21Â 588 civil servants fingered for fraud had been charged and 3Â 000 had agreed to repay the department — at no interest and some with repayment schedules of up to 31 years.
Buyelwa Sonjica
Minister of Minerals and Energy
Grade: C-
Sonjica has been at the helm for a mere seven months, but is starting to make an impression. In the May Cabinet reshuffle, she was promoted to minerals and energy in a switch with Lindiwe Hendricks. Stakeholders describe her as ”a breath of fresh air” and have lauded her positive attitude and eagerness to learn. However, they say the acid test will come next year, when she will have to confront many vexing issues.
Sonjica has to deal with the backlog of new mining-rights applications, which critics claim is holding back foreign investment. Chamber of Mines president Lazarus Zim earlier this year highlighted severe under-investment in mining, still a strategic industry.
There are also worrying signs that the government is using the new rights regime to boost those with ruling-party connections. In October, the Mail & Guardian revealed that key manganese rights have been handed to a consortium including an ANC front company, Chancellor House.
Against the backdrop of continuing power cuts in major centres, Sonjica has to drive electricity roll-out to meet burgeoning demand and push the country towards the government’s 6% growth target.
Attempts to place electricity distribution in the hands of regional electricity distributors have stalled, as have plans to place energy efficiency in the hands of the Central Energy Fund — as Eskom refuses to hand over the R600-million a year generated through electricity sales.
The liquid-fuels sector has seen progress towards cleaner petrol and diesel, but Sonjica will also have to oversee developments in the emerging bio-fuels industry, identified in the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa as an industry with significant job-creating potential.
Makhenkesi Stofile
Minister of Sport and Recreation
Grade: E (2005 A)
Stofile’s dizzying crash from the heights to the depths reflects his largely comatose performance this year. For many months, the Monty Python ”Dead Parrot” skit seemed the best fit. But towards the end of the year he burst into life as Statler and Waldorf, the two grumpy old men who heckle from the balcony in the Muppets.
Sport is not the most arduous portfolio in the Cabinet, and there was a suspicion, when Stofile moved from the Eastern Cape premiership, that he had been given a comfortable sinecure. His first year in office belied this. Although he did not have a high public profile, he did good work behind the scenes, particularly promoting indigenous sports.
This year his profile has sunk so low as to become invisible. In rugby and cricket, the transformation saga progressed without meaningful input from the ministry. Both codes took advantage of the lull in the waves of bombast to select their first black captains (Chiliboy Ralepelle and Ashwell Prince, respectively), though both were temporary appointments while the regular skippers were injured. Stofile’s role in this was to offer his congratulations.
Soccer, however, is not a sport that can be relied on to get its own house in order. With the World Cup 42 months away, and no significant work yet on building the five new stadiums planned for the extravaganza, the sports minister should be at the forefront of government efforts to galvanise the soccer authorities into action. But, too often, Stofile has been nowhere to be seen.
Manto Tshabalala-Msimang
Minister of Health
Grade: F (2005 F)
The minister of health could hardly mutter ”et tu, Brute” from her sickbed, after she was called to account for her ”irresponsible” comments and actions on Aids by the deputy minister of health in a British newspaper interview at the end of 2006. The outspoken comments by Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge capped off an annus horribilis for Tshabalala-Msimang, which has seen her effectively sidelined.
The minister had gagged her well-regarded deputy on the subject of HIV/Aids, and the public criticism by Madlala-Routledge indicates just how weak Tshabalala-Msimang has become.
In chess terms she appears to have just a pawn or two and maybe a bishop left on her side, against three queens: Madlala-Routledge, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Sipho Mthathi of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).
The low point of the year for Tshabalala-Msimang was August’s biennial International Aids Conference in Toronto, where her unproductive advocacy for unproven herbal remedies, support for the merits of garlic, olive oil, lemons and beetroot against HIV/Aids, and apparent dislike of conventional medicines such as antiretrovirals became a leitmotif of the world’s premier HIV/Aids forum.
It seems the repeated international attacks as a result of the minister’s performance spurred the Cabinet into action.
September saw the setting up of a new interministerial committee (IMC) on Aids, and the deputy president began driving national anti-Aids strategies. In early October the minister went into hospital — as the year drew to a close she was into her third month of sick leave resulting from a lung infection.
In the minister’s absence the Department of Health again appears to be lumbering into action, although it was unable to complete the updated HIV/Aids and sexually transmitted infection strategic plan for South Africa 2007-2011 on schedule for its December 1 launch (the last one expired a year ago). The good news is that the missing details and targets are being filled in by a revitalised collaboration between civil society and government, which finally sees non-governmental expertise being brought into the service of the country.
Latest figures from the World Health Organisation suggest that about 300Â 000 people are receiving antiretroviral therapy in South Africa, making it by far the world’s biggest programme. But much of the expertise, resources and drive come from international donors and NGOs, not from within the government.
Aside from HIV/Aids, the Department of Health seems to spend its time fighting fires rather than building firebreaks. Shortage of financial and human resources, skills and infrastructure combined with massive demand put a huge strain on the health system. But there is no cohesive, consistent and holistic strategic plan for the healthcare system in South Africa and a distinct lack of clear leadership. An alarming reminder of the failure of the public health system has been the rise of almost incurable extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), which results from repeated failed anti-TB treatment.
The Risk Equalisation Fund is now being set up to introduce social solidarity into the medical-scheme environment, but there is a lack of movement on the process of creating access to medical schemes for millions of low-income employees and their families.
Marthinus van Schalkwyk
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
Grade: B (2005 B)
Van Schalkwyk ended the year with a bang when government spokesperson Themba Maseko announced that the Integrated Coastal Management Bill, published for comment in early December, would clamp down on foreign ownership of prime coastal real estate. Van Schalkwyk quickly offered the assurance that the Bill only aimed to ensure ecologically sustainable coastal development.
Though his other actions failed to draw the same attention, Van Schalkwyk quietly plugged away at getting the nation’s ecological house in order. Achievements included the launch of new environmental impact assessment regulations and streamlining of bureaucratic processes.
South Africa played a lead role in articulating the needs of developing countries in world climate-change talks, and tentatively moved to clean up South Africa’s air pollution.
Enforcement of environmental laws was boosted by the appointment of 800 ”Green Scorpions”. However, besides marine enforcement, they have yet to demonstrate their sting.
Steps were taken to increase land under formal protection, targeted as 8% of the country by 2010. More than R175-million was budgeted for land purchases and R395-million for park infrastructure until 2009. Transfrontier parks were boosted by the launch of the Giriyondo gate between the Kruger National Park and Mozambique, a new border post with Lesotho and an agreement for the Limpopo-Shashe cross-border park.
Van Schalkwyk’s performance as tourism minister continued to improve. Tourist arrivals during the first seven months of 2006 were up 15,8% and his department predicted the annual figure would surpass last year’s record of 7,3-million arrivals.
The 2006 Tourism Indaba, held in Durban in May each year, was the biggest ever. The black economic empowerment tourism scorecard and tourism grading initiatives continued to roll out around the country.
The main criticism was that, in his efforts to accommodate developers’ needs and combat negative perceptions of environmental impact assessments, he lost sight of the dwindling of natural resources outside protected areas. This was most obvious in marine resources, with a drastic decline in abalone, hake and West Coast rock lobster.
Managerial chaos at the Marine and Coastal Management division and bankruptcy of the Marine Living Resources Fund exacerbated the decline of fisheries. At the end of November Van Schalkwyk and his Director General, Pam Yako, tried to stabilise the situation by meeting fishing industry representatives.
Another major criticism was a delay in formulating regulations for the control of alien and invasive species. Scientific recommendations for implementing a national system have been stalled for almost a year.
Lulama (Lulu) Xingwana
Agriculture and Land Affairs
Grade: B-
Former deputy minerals minister Xingwana arrived in her new portfolio with a reputation for outspokenness and controversy. She has made a promising start, but it is too early to judge whether her fiery style will blaze a trail or scorch the landscape.
Many stakeholders held their breath when the placid Thoko Didiza moved on to public works. Activists hoped Xingwana would inject a new urgency, even militancy, into the terminally stagnant land reform programme, while farmers feared she represented a step towards large-scale land grabs. She started on a fiery note by strongly emphasising the need for expropriation in cases where landowners are holding out for unreasonably high prices. But she did not invent the policy; expropriation for land reform has long been a legal option.
In her first six months Xingwana has been quite impressive, inter alia lighting a firecracker under somnolent civil servants in her notoriously slothful department.
Critics were impressed with her moves to cut some of the red tape delaying the settlement of land claims. And despite their initial hesitancy, many farmers have found her approachable. She is willing to listen, and her ideas are creative and fresh.
In agriculture Xingwana has built on Didiza’s groundwork. Farmers were encouraged by her negotiating skills in Cairns in September, when she argued that the US, European Union and Japan should stop bickering over who should first reduce domestic farm subsidies and start acting.
This is part two of our Cabinet report card. Click here to read part one