The good, the bad, and the ugly. How did South Africa’s Cabinet members fare this year? Starting at the top, President Thabo Mbeki is now officially a lame-duck. In Polokwane this week, he was trounced by African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma in the race for the party’s top job. While Mbeki’s legacy will be written in time, he has not had a great year.
2007 Report Card: Cabinet ministers from A to G
What the scores mean
A: Take a bow. You’re doing an excellent job
B: Good, but room for improvement
C: You’re okay, 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
G: Gone
Thabo Mbeki
President
Grade: G (2006: A- for governance and D for leadership)
President Thabo Mbeki is now officially a lame-duck. Thus, his grading of G, which means that he is Gone. In Polokwane this week, he was trounced by ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma in the race for the party’s top job. All six top positions in the party have gone to Zuma’s people. At the time of writing, it appeared that the rest of the national executive will also be dominated by Zuma’s people.
This will give Mbeki little leverage over the ruling party and suggests that there will not be two centres of power but only one real locale of authority: Luthuli House, which will be Zuma’s perch until the elections of 2009.
In time Mbeki’s legacy will be written and credit must be given where it is due. He must be credited with the country’s economic stability and the boom that has enabled massive wealth transfers to poor people. In addition, he has crafted a sensible and influential foreign policy that has enhanced South Africa’s stature.
Mbeki has also been the architect of a modern South African state, but one that has still to reach the levels of service and efficiency that will have an impact on poverty levels. He has not had a great year. Two major crises overshadowed hard work.
These were his decisions to axe the popular deputy minister of health, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, and to suspend the head of the national prosecuting authority, Vusi Pikoli. The suspension has had the effect of delaying the arrest of police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi on racketeering and corruption charges; and has meant that the decision on a corruption charge against Zuma has been delayed until after the Polokwane conference.
This week, the Young Communist League warned against any attempt to charge Zuma, while the conference also decided to merge the Scorpions into the police service.
Where to for now for Mbeki? There is talk that he may step down and he certainly seemed a tired leader this week, diminished and greyed by the tribulations of high office. There is no doubt an international job of some stature waiting for him for he has played the corridors of global power with aplomb. Or he may retire to form a foundation. As an intellectual, that would be a fitting post-presidential job. After all, he will surely miss his weekly missive to the nation. Or perhaps he might put that penchant for photography to good use.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Deputy President
Grade: A (2006: B), but on her way out
Mlambo-Ngcuka must have suspected that she was being given a poisoned chalice when she accepted the post of deputy president after Jacob Zuma’s dismissal from the Cabinet in 2005.
Her political star has waxed and waned with Mbeki’s, and she has served him well. But in Polokwane this week, her fate was sealed. It is safe to say that this young and dynamic technocrat should start looking for another job.
Perhaps her husband, Bulelani, can line up a post at his company, Amabubhesi Investments.
Her most important legacy will be her efforts to ensure that the national Aids treatment plan was put back on track, after being derailed by another Mbeki favourite, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. She has been an able and brave promoter of the National Strategic Plan on HIV and Aids, ensuring that the South African National Aids Council maintained unity and purpose after Mbeki again alienated civil society by firing deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.
The deputy president has also worked hard to promote the accelerated and shared growth initiative of South Africa (Asgisa) and the joint initiative for priority skills acquisition (Jipsa), which separately seek to overcome the constraints on the economy and to find solutions to the country’s skills shortage.
According to the presidency’s annual report, work done by Jipsa to date includes the drafting of a plan to train more than 50 000 people by 2010, and the production of a detailed plan to increase the number of engineering graduates by an extra 1Â 000 every year.
Essop Pahad
Minister in the Presidency
Grade: G for gone (2006: B)
The trouble with tying your fortunes so closely to the head honcho is that when his head rolls, so does yours.
In Polokwane this week, Pahad looked a ghostly shadow of his formerly bullish self as he hoped against hope that the voting would deliver a result in his man’s favour. It did not, and it is rumoured that Pahad is among the Cabinet ministers who are sending out their CVs.
This makes him difficult to grade. Pahad has softened in recent years, playing an admirable role in trying to negotiate to stave off legislation such as the Film and Publications Amendment Act, which could have a debilitating impact on the work of the media. He has also played a central role in South Africa’s developing relationship with India. Will he be South Africa’s next ambassador to the Asian country?
In other spheres, his ministry has not worked out as planned. It is meant to be a coordinating centre for world-class policies to empower women, the disabled and children. In his budget speech this year, Pahad said that an evaluation was needed to see how the offices for each group could be improved for greater impact.
The various youth structures (other than the Umsobomvu Fund) do not work and the much-vaunted national youth service is yet to take off on any scale. After 13 years, it’s a bit late to be looking for solutions.
Ngconde Balfour
Minister of Correctional Services
Grade: F (2006: E)
Is this an unfixable department? Or is the problem bad leadership? We think the latter. Since his appointment to the ministry in 2004, Balfour has failed to change the decades-old culture of fear and uncritical thinking in the prisons administration. The result: gross incompetence, mismanagement and an inability to change that afflicts the entire department.
The past year was no different. Yes, there were 16 fewer escapes than in 2006; the department finally got a qualified finance chief and Special Assignment‘s exposé of a planned escape saw five warders dismissed. But the positives are almost irrelevant when one considers the larger context.
Overcrowding has risen to 40%, from 158Â 000 inmates in 2006 to 161Â 000 in 2007, and of the eight new prisons mentioned by Mbeki in his State of the Nation speeches since 2004, construction has started on just one.
The department received a qualified audit opinion for the sixth consecutive year, unnatural deaths in prisons more than doubled to 62 and HIV/Aids therapy for offenders is still far below target.
Then there were the scandals, now so common that they are almost ho-hum: the preferential treatment of the politically connected criminals Tony Yengeni and Schabir Shaik, the absurd ‘Vaseline†report on the escape of Mozambican murder accused Annanias Mathe and the suspension of Paul Theron, the doctor who blew the whistle on poor health conditions at Pollsmoor Prison.
Balfour’s reaction to all these controversies has been to suppress and deny. Cabinet’s appointment of Vernie Petersen as national commissioner in place of the embattled Linda Mti was without doubt the highlight of what has been another gloomy year for correctional services.
To succeed in his mission of turning around the department, Petersen will need strong political support from a minister who acknowledges the sickness of the department and is committed to changing it. Balfour does not seem to be that minister.
Thoko Didiza
Minister of Public Works
Grade: B- (2006: C)
Just more than a year in her post, Didiza has done well to improve the department’s image by being approachable, attentive to different opinions and committed to tackling the many problems bequeathed to her by Stella Sigcau.
Critics say Sigcau was so inefficient (and ultimately so absent through illness) that anybody who replaced her would shine. While this may be so, Didiza has demonstrated a commitment to and concern for the state assets that form a key part of her watch. All the government’s national fixed assets not covered by legislation fall under her department.
Didiza has also earnestly set about boosting government’s plan to create jobs. By the end of March the Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP), designed to create job and training opportunities, mainly through rural infrastructural projects, had attracted more than 14Â 000 projects with an associated expenditure of close to R13-billion. According to the works department, these projects generated more than 716Â 000 work opportunities for unemployed people from previously disadvantaged communities.
But one should be realistic about the potential of this programme as a work creator. Although it aims to create a million job opportunities by 2009 and claims to have reached 59% of its goals this year, it cannot yet be viewed as a success in terms of poverty alleviation. Most of the jobs it has created have been short term, many lasting no longer than four months.
While the department received a qualified audit this year, good governance and accountability are watchwords the minister has tried to live by. At 42, she is a young minister with considerable promise.
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Grade: C (2006: B-)
2007 was a big year for South African foreign policy as a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council brought opportunity and intense controversy for Dlamini-Zuma and her staff.
The year began bafflingly for many, with a January vote that helped to prevent the council from condemning human rights abuses by the thoroughly appalling military rulers of Burma.
The decision outraged rights activists and the Western powers, pleased Russia and China, and confused almost everyone else. But a marker had been laid down.
The United States and Britain were even more annoyed by South Africa’s apparent advocacy on Iran’s behalf in the debate over Security Council sanctions aimed at the country’s nuclear programme. Support for the compromise planned by the International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed el Baradei lay behind that position.
The Iran policy has since been vindicated, but the brutal repression of protests in Burma has drawn embarrassed-sounding condemnations from Dlamini-Zuma’s deputy, Sue van der Merwe.
Independence for Kosovo, which South Africa will probably follow Russia in opposing, is likely to the one of the first tests of the new year.
In much of this (bar Kosovo) Dlamini-Zuma herself was surprisingly little in evidence.
The plan is now clear: to build support among the emerging world powers who will need to be won over if that Security Council seat is to be made permanent, while relying on South Africa’s major trading partners — Europe, Britain and the US — to remain onside because there are no other credible contenders for them to back.
She is more in evidence as a booster of relations with Brazil and India, both of which are now leaving South Africa far behind in global importance. But reluctance to do meaningful trade deals with such potentially daunting competitors limits her scope for real action.
Better relations with China, however, are an important foreign policy achievement, and will affect the shape of our entire foreign policy, not least in Africa.
On the continent, however, it is Mbeki who takes the lead and who must take responsibility for decisions about how to handle the Darfur crisis, Zimbabwe and renewed violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Explaining yourself is a crucial part of any foreign minister’s job. Dlamini-Zuma leaves far too much of that to other people.
Alec Erwin Minister of Public Enterprises
Grade: C- (2006: B-)
Erwin suffers from a mild case of folie de grandeur. Because of the enormous political capital he has accumulated as one of Mbeki’s most influential economic advisers, he believes that he can force through ambitious policies with little regard for Parliament or the regulatory environment established since 1994. His supporters call this a push for ‘coherence†in development strategy, but it strays at times into wilful disregard for wisdom accumulated outside his office.
Erwin originally announced that the state broadband company, Infraco, would be formally established by end-March 2007, blithely ignoring the complicated regulatory hurdles it faced. There were squabbles with the treasury over business plans and funding structures and with the communications department over a rival undersea cable. And there was unhappiness at Icasa and apparent surprise when the parliamentary committee tasked with rubber-stamping the Infraco Bill instead pointed out that its approach was wrong-headed. That committee has since lost its capable chair, and cheap broadband still seems a long way off.
Criticism can also be levelled at Erwin’s rough handling of the Richtersveld community claims for compensation for loss of land and mineral wealth from the state-owned diamond mining company, Alexkor. Approaching a poor, rural people in the same spirit as he might play World Trade Organisation hardball with the rich nations, he split the community and manoeuvred it into accepting a stake in a new entity comprising Alexkor and the least lucrative bits of De Beers’s West Coast operation.
Crucially, the jury is still out on the new economic strategy policy to which Erwin’s ministry is so central. He has never explained how he proposes to square the apparently conflicting aims of using state enterprises to lower business costs and stimulate economic activity with the demand that parastatals pay their way as commercial undertakings that raise their own money in capital markets. It is very difficult to deliver cheap services, spiffy new infrastructure and solid returns all at once.
The attempt to square the circle is clearest in the case of Eskom, which has threatened 20% tariff increases over two years in an effort to pay for much-needed expansion without government money. The result has been a row with the National Electricity Regulator. Meanwhile, ‘load-shedding†continues to hurt the real economy.
Erwin deserves some credit for the continued convalescence of Transnet, which reported a 12% increase in earnings. State arms company Denel also improved its performance from disastrous to merely abysmal, although it still managed to post a R547-million loss and recently announced the resignation of its great white hope, CEO Shaun Liebenberg. An R8-billion South African National Defence Force contract for vehicles will help.
Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi
Minister of Public Service and Administration
Grade: C (2006: B-)
Despite her tendency to waffle on in mind-numbing development jargon, Fraser-Moleketi is one of the more straight-talking and media-friendly of the Cabinet ministers. She has always been up-front about what she thinks is wrong with the public service and how she intends to fix it.
But the reverse side of the coin is her rather abrasive and autocratic style, particularly in dealing with key non-government actors such as organised workers and NGOs.
With local government, her department has made substantial advances in rolling out the community development workers programme, an attempt to bring the government closer to the people.
And she applies her drive for ‘an efficient and effective†public service to her own department, which appears well run. She received a clean bill of financial health from the Auditor General — despite problems with the asset register.
The downside was apparent in her handling of the South Africa report of the African Peer Review Mechanism. There were strong indications that the government was withholding the release of the report because it objected to adverse comments about South Africa’s crime rate, and there were complaints from NGOs and Cosatu about lack of consultation.
But it was in dealing with this year’s massive public service strike that Fraser-Moleketi was at her most controversial.
Particularly in a health sector afflicted by chronic staff shortages and inadequate facilities — Western Cape primary health clinics suffer from a 54% shortage of nurses — the government’s final pre-strike offer of 6% amounted to a provocation. Striking nurses, some with close to 20 years’ experience, were selectively dismissed.
Having described its pre-strike offer as ‘non-negotiableâ€, government eventually caved in anyway, conceding a 7,5% increase. Was the month of mayhem really necessary?
Fraser-Moleketi was no doubt acting on a Cabinet, and specifically presidential, mandate. But she was the line minister. The strike was the most important matter she had to deal with in 2007, and her bull-in-a-china-shop approach largely explains the fall in her grade.
Lindiwe Hendricks
Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry
Grade: B (2006: B)
Hendricks holds one of the keys to South Africa’s future — an adequate water supply in a semi-arid region that is likely to be hard hit by climate change.
To meet government’s target of 6% growth by 2010, her department needs to ensure that there is sufficient water for areas critical to economic expansion, including power generation, biofuels, food production, industrial activity and mining.
One of the areas Hendricks oversees is water and sanitation, where much has been achieved. The department reports that last year 1,2-million more people received access to basic water and an additional 250Â 000 households were served with basic sanitation services. Yet too many South Africans still depend on the bucket system, and the department’s claimed successes in eradicating it are constantly offset by urban drift and the mushrooming of informal settlements.
A court application by the residents of Phiri in Soweto to have Johannesburg Water’s prepaid service declared unlawful and unconstitutional turned a harsh spotlight on the inadequacy of the department’s free water allocation. The case could force Hendricks to review existing policy of a free 200 litres per household and graduated payments thereafter, depending on consumption.
In many small towns water quality continues to plummet — Delmas, the site of repeated disease outbreaks, is of particular concern. Overall, water quality in rural South Africa is not up to scratch, and raw water in much of the country is not potable. The plummeting of South Africa’s raw water quality is the water affairs department’s single biggest worry.
Hendricks also had to put out many fires this year — literally, as serious veld fires erupted in many parts of the country, destroying critical forestry plantations in Mpumalanga.
Hendricks’s style is that of a hard worker behind the scenes. But she has shown a welcome willingness to engage interest groups.
Pallo Jordan
Minister of Arts and Culture
Grade: B- (2006: C+)
There’s no doubting Jordan’s concern for the healthy development of the country’s various cultures. His department puts out a release every week to that effect. His detractors are not persuaded. They talk of some disarray in the management of national assets and 250 vacant government posts in the sector.
Through his torrent of press statements, Jordan also seeks to build bridges with artists, never missing an opportunity to congratulate an international award-winner or celebrate the achievements of an artist who has taken his final bow.
He is admired for his open-door policy and, if he is in the neighbourhood, any one of his constituents is free to pay him a visit for a chat. Unfortunately, his many commitments have removed him from his parliamentary duties and he was one of a number of ministers ordered back to Parliament in October after he had missed three oral question sessions earlier in the year.
In October he hosted ‘frank talk†imbizos in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, accompanied by his new director general, Thembinkosi Philemon Wakashe, the well-qualified successor to the disastrous Itumeleng Mosala.
The year started well for Jordan, with the film industry riding the crest of the 2006 Tsotsi Oscar wave. In February he received a handsome grant of $1-million from visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao for the World African Heritage Fund launched in May. In June South Africa hosted the World Library Information Congress — a feather in Jordan’s cap, one observer said, as ‘he is very into librariesâ€. As a result, he rolled out a conditional grant of R200-million to local libraries.
In October, the department’s qualified audit cast a shadow over his performance. He assured Parliament that R13-million in ‘unexplained expenditure†did not indicate loss or destruction of national assets. Observers remain unconvinced.
Jordan’s detractors say that too much old South African legislation still needs to be revised and that the right procedures have not been followed over controversial name changes. The department responds that there was a policy review workshop in 2007 looking towards future needs, including amendments to the Geographic Names Council Act.
On the upside, Jordan and company spent 99% of their budget allocation, meaning that financing should trickle down to where it is needed most — among the practitioners.
Ronnie Kasrils
Minister of Intelligence
Grade: A- (2006: A-)
This is likely to be the last Cabinet report card for Kasrils. A Zuma administration looms and Kasrils, who is perceived as one of the strategic struts of the Mbeki machine, will be high on Zuma’s hit list. This makes his legacy at intelligence all the more important.
Kasrils appears to enjoy respect from his spooks, including senior figures from the apartheid era, who perceive him as committed to the institution and its staff.
There is a consensus, which includes opposition MPs, that he has gradually improved the intelligence product and that, given his portfolio, he encourages an unusual level of transparency and debate.
Kasrils is passionate about the need for intelligence reform, exemplified by the debacle around former National Intelligence Agency boss Billy Masetlha.
Masetlha has come out of his legal tussle with Kasrils in reasonable shape, showing up procedural flaws in his dismissal and raising valid questions about the motivation for apparently ill-conceived criminal charges against him. But he has not come close to demonstrating his central allegation: that Kasrils was part of a political conspiracy against Zuma and Masetlha himself.
Kasrils, on the other hand, appears genuine in his desire to ensure that the intelligence services internalise values of lawful action, political neutrality and loyalty to the Constitution.
He has promoted a Civic Education Programme within the services, and his Five Principles of Professionalism set out clearly and simply the bottom line for the conduct of espionage.
What happens in practice is always another matter.
The Masetlha crisis prompted Kasrils to assume powers to sign off on certain operational issues in a way that smudges the line between political accountability and professional independence — something which may come back to haunt us under a new minister.
But the Masetlha saga has also prompted a serious internal review of procedures, and the appointment of a Ministerial Review Commission to review legislation, regulations and operational policies.
The commission is also looking at the mandate under which the services operate — including the political intelligence mandate which renders the institution wide open to abuse.
Indications are that the commission, which will deliver a public report early next year, may recommend that the mandate is considerably narrowed, to embrace only the more traditional criminal and state security issues that usually comprise the intelligence focus.
If Kasrils survives long enough to pilot these reforms through Parliament, they may become his most important legacy.
Mosiuoa Lekota
Minister of Defence
Grade: F (2006: D)
If Zuma takes over as president in 2009 ‘Terror†Lekota will be first in line for the bullet — and not a moment too soon.
Lekota has long been regarded as an absentee minister. This year his deep involvement in the succession battle as Mbeki’s political battering ram has sent him even further AWOL.
As a consequence, the SANDF is showing desperate signs of neglect. In his complacent foreword to the latest defence department annual report, Lekota boasted about the arrival of hi-tech ships and planes as part of the arms deal.
‘The delivery of this equipment and its capabilities have demonstrated the wisdom and the tenacity of the decision to equip our national defence,†he proclaimed. But the rest of the document bears out the skewed spending patterns introduced by the over-priced and inappropriate acquisition of major combat systems.
In almost every service arm, it mentions a loss of skills and the desperate measures to retain critical personnel by diverting operational budgets to bolster salaries. It points to a growing backlog in maintenance, which has already made some units effectively unavailable. There are reports of a lack of basic supplies. The Regular Tank Regiment, for example, achieved only 50% of its performance requirements because a lack of funding and ammunition meant no continuation training took place.
Soft-skin military vehicle availability stood at 40% as a result of an ageing vehicle fleet, while the acquisition of a new generation of military trucks was delayed by irregularities in the initial tender process.
The defence force is doing an heroic job of staying intact and operational, but the dire situation has prompted an unusual level of frankness from the military professionals.
‘The personnel budget of the SA Army continued to absorb the budget so that only approximately 11% of the budget was available for Chief of the Army to utilise at his discretion as operating funds,†says the annual report. ‘As a consequence, the SA Army had to adopt a survival strategy.
‘The above practice has resulted in standards of proficiency being decreased. The over-utilisation of certain scarce skills in external and internal deployments has led to a decline in job satisfaction and morale.
‘The SA Army has developed an incentive scheme to retain some of these scarce skills. However, the scheme could not be implemented owing to lack of financial resources.â€
The delivery of the Agusta A109 light utility helicopter is almost four years late and the late release of the Hawk jet trainer has disrupted planned training and conversion schedules.
Denel’s much-vaunted Rooivalk fleet suffered a five-month grounding caused by technical problems and yet another scandalous scheme to prop up Denel, the Ground-based Air Defence System, has suffered a three-year delay due to ‘non-performance by the main contractorâ€.
Judged by his own annual report, the minister has failed.
Report Card — Part Two 2007