President Cyril Ramaphosa
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday defended increasing centralisation in his office by saying he carried the responsibility to ensure the executive works efficiently and in the collective interest of the country.
“Some of you have correctly said that the presidency has ‘convening powers’. But it is much more than that: it is to ensure that there is intergovernmental cooperation and execution,” Ramaphosa said in reply to debate on the department’s budget vote.
“Some of you in this house have said we are building a ‘Super Presidency’ that subsumes the role of government departments. On the contrary, the presidency complements and strengthens the work of government as a whole.”
The president drew a link between his vision for the multi-party coalition government and the decision to locate more entities in his office, including oversight of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
It must resolve the socio-economic ills that endure 30 years after the end of apartheid, as there are “far too many South Africans for whom the promise of a better life remains elusive”.
He said he was speaking of the homeless, of parents who went hungry so that their children could eat and matriculants who cannot find employment.
“It is the plight of those who are poor, unemployed and living lives of great hardship that should occupy our attention.”
The state had the intention, the skills and the resources to create a better life for all, Ramaphosa said.
“And we have an opportunity through this government of national unity to come together to make this vision a reality.”
He added that this was “the driving force” of this presidency.
“The Constitution requires me, as president, to promote the unity of the nation and all that which will advance the republic.
“In carrying out this constitutional mandate, I consider it my overriding duty, with all of us, to create a society that is more just, more equal, more compassionate and more humane.”
On Tuesday, during the debate on the presidency’s R612 million budget, the new deputy minister of electricity and energy, the Democratic Alliance’s Samantha Graham, questioned Ramaphosa’s decision to locate Eskom and all other state-owned enterprises in his office.
She said the decision in 2022 to create an electricity ministry in the presidency to address the energy crisis with agility has “definitely borne some fruit”, and the decision, in announcing his new cabinet, to make it a free-standing portfolio responsible for energy policy as well, was sensible.
“While the president has moved electricity out of the presidency, he has moved state-owned enterprises in,” Graham added.
The implication was, she said, that Eskom now resided in the department of planning, monitoring and evaluation and not with the new department, despite initial indications that it would have direct oversight over the power utility.
It made “absolute sense” that the organisation responsible for electricity be housed in the department, she added.
Graham said Ramaphosa’s confirmation, in his opening of parliament address last week, that ownership of all parastatals would be centralised in a new holding company, did not bode well.
“In our estimation, this is merely another model for the failed department of public Enterprises which creates another unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. The cost implications of this are also astronomical and unjustifiable in an economy that is trying to claw its way out of the financial morass in which it currently exists,” Graham said.
”While the presidency was perhaps the perfect vehicle for an emergency intervention into the electricity crisis, it is not necessarily the answer to the failing SOEs.”
Salvaging these, she argued, required locating each within their relevant line department.
The National State Enterprises Bill, which provides for the creation of the holding company, was tabled in parliament in January.
Asked who the entity would ultimately answer to, the presidency on Wednesday told the Mail & Guardian that “the legislation will clarify the reporting line”.
In his speech, Ramaphosa said the holding company model was international best practice and the responsibility for all processes required to set up the entity would fall to the planning, monitoring and evaluation department.
The department, located in his office, will establish a dedicated “SOE reform unit” to oversee this work but the utilities that previously resided with the department of state-owned enterprises, which he has done away with, will report to their respective line departments on policy and regulatory matters.
He said while some MPs were dismissive of the work coordinated in the presidency, and sceptical of the size of its budget, the measures taken by his office — and the reform driven by Operation Vulindlela, the delivery unit in the presidency — have yielded tangible benefits.
“They mean more affordable and reliable electricity, cleaner water, efficient trains and lower data costs. While the capacity to drive these reforms required a budget in the tens of millions, it has unlocked more than R500 billion in new investment in our economy,” he said.
The presidency is, as the commission of inquiry on state capture lamented, not overseen by a dedicated parliamentary portfolio committee and several speakers in the debate on Tuesday called for this to be addressed at last.
Ramaphosa said he supported the recommendation by members of the legislature’s rules committee, after a study tour of the British parliament, that the portfolio committee on planning, monitoring and evaluation should play this role.
“I do believe that what the delegation has recommended is in line with the manner in which the presidency is able to exercise its accountability to parliament.”