Deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana are set to announce their withdrawal from politics as the curtain falls on the Thabo Mbeki era.
The Mail & Guardian has also learned from government communication sources that Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad has also told colleagues that this will be his last term in office and that he is planning to retire.
They will join the growing exodus of Mbeki-appointed ministers and senior government managers who are leaving public life.
This week Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin announced that he is leaving government next year.
The M&G has established that Mlambo-Ngcuka told close colleagues that she wants to leave government to pursue her studies when her term ends in April next year. She is apparently planning to complete a PhD in education and work on a new foundation which will specialise in education.
Mlambo-Ngcuka offered to step down earlier to make way for ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe when the party first mooted the idea of Motlanthe joining the Cabinet.
Her offer was turned down by ANC colleagues who urged her to soldier on until next year’s elections.
Mlambo-Ngcuka angered many of the ANC’s current leaders when she openly campaigned for Mbeki ahead of the party’s Polokwane conference last year.
Her spokesperson, Denzil Taylor, would say only that ‘the deputy president has, in various instances, indicated that she would want to play a role in education and skills when she leaves governmentâ€.
The director general in the presidency, Frank Chikane, has already announced in a Cabinet statement that he will leave the president’s office at the end of October this year.
Chikane is one of the president’s closest associates, having served Mbeki while he was deputy president and moving with him when he became president.
The M&G understands that labour ministers in Africa are pushing for Mdladlana to join the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as its next secretary after the incumbent, Juan Somavia, retires in June next year, as the organisation has never had an African leader.
As a result, Mdladlana is not expected to return to the next Cabinet. He served as the ILO’s chairperson in 2006.
Several attempts to contact Mdladlana for comment were unsuccessful.
Presidential spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga confirmed this week that a senior official in the presidency, Louis du Plooy, has also resigned.
A senior staffer in the presidency said other officials were also applying for other jobs.
The M&G also understands that almost all the provincial premiers appointed by Mbeki will not return after the elections.
The first to bite the dust was North West Premier and former provincial ANC chairperson Edna Molewa, who has now been voted out of the provincial executive committee.
She failed to make the grade for the ANC’s national executive committee in Polokwane last year and last week could not muster sufficient support to be included in the provincial leadership.
Molewa never really enjoyed much support in the party as premier.
Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela, another unpopular choice for the top provincial government post, is also seemingly dead and buried.
Recently the ANC and Cosatu general secretaries, Gwede Mantashe and Zwelinzima Vavi, said they would investigate the poor governance in the province. The Eastern Cape has been stricken by scandal after scandal, including chronic service failures and the recurrent inability to spend budgets.
The SACP in the Eastern Cape, now boosted by a close relationship with the provincial ANC, has already asked Balindlela to step down immediately.
Mpumalanga Premier Thabang Makwetla is also a dead man walking. Both the ANC Youth League and the SACP in the province have called for his immediate redeployment elsewhere.
Free State Premier Beatrice Marshoff, who was plucked from obscurity and made premier by Mbeki, is likely to hit the road as she has failed to win the support of the provincial ANC.
Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa will not return to the province after serving two terms and opting out of the leadership structures of the provincial ANC late last year.