Concern about the concentration of black economic empowerment (BEE) deals in the hands of a few big players is set to increase after Standard Bank’s announcement that it will be selling an effective 10% of its South African banking operations to Safika Holdings and Millennium Consolidated Investments (MCI), among others.

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.

The government has political power, but not enough influence on the mechanisms of the state to turn them into real tools of social and economic development. This is a crucial finding of the government’s 10-year review of the first decade of freedom released on Thursday.