Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu will likely be top of the list of those who will get the chop.
Newly re-elected ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa has crossed his first hurdle ahead of the 2024 general elections.
His next grand mission will be cleaning houses. It’s inevitable that Ramaphosa will reshuffle his cabinet sooner, rather than later.
This will be Ramaphosa’s chance to prove that he can be ruthless and move away from his image of being an lame duck president.
Already, Ramaphosa has two vacancies in his cabinet. He missed a grand opportunity to get rid of his detractors when former minister of public service and administration Ayanda Dlodlo left her position for the World Bank.
Ramaphosa frustrated many of his allies during this time. Thulas Nxesi, the labour minister, has been acting in the public service ministry for about a year.
Now with a firm mandate from ANC branches, in his final term as ANC president, he will have to stamp his authority.
Already two ministries will be vacant after this election. Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula has been elected as the new secretary general, meaning that he will have to be permanently based at Luthuli House.
Outside of these two key ministries, Ramaphosa has to seem to be firm when dealing with ministers who have publicly gone up against him.
Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu will likely be top of the list of those who will get the chop.
As far back as January, Sisulu showed signs of insolence when she defied her boss by insisting that she stood by her remarks against the judiciary after Ramaphosa said she had agreed to withdraw them and published an apology in her name.
Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma went further by voting with the opposition to start impeachment processes in parliament. She has also publicly called for him to step aside.
With four of his allies having been elected in the top seven, Ramaphosa’s authority has been significantly boosted. Ramaphosa will have to rely heavily on Gwede Mantashe who was re-elected in the position of national chair.
Mantashe and his provincial allies have done what they could to give the statesman the assurance he needs to take his foot off the brakes.
One suggestion made has been to incorporate Mdumiseni Ntuli as part of the Luthuli House administration, making him the next party spokesperson and co-opting him in the NEC.
While he is likely to sleep more soundly than he did in weeks, there is still the matter of the election of the additional members of the national executive committee (NEC).
In 2017, Ramaphosa took over a deeply divided NEC, which resulted in him taking many of his political enemies into the fold in some of his key ministries. The composition of the NEC is critical to Ramaphosa’s renewal agenda within the party as well as any hope of driving his agenda to recover the country’s economy.
His allies are working the ground marshalling all their delegates to ensure that they do not lose focus as a result of the top seven victory.
With a top seven dominated by the former Transvaal leaders, Ramaphosa and his allies will have to find a way to appease a rigid KwaZulu-Natal, which lost on positions in the party for the second consecutive term.
One suggestion made has been to incorporate Mdumiseni Ntuli as part of the Luthuli House administration, making him the next party spokesperson and co-opting him in the NEC.
While Ntuli is rumoured to have bad blood with the current KwaZulu-Natal provincial executive committee, he is still very well respected in the province and a move to incorporate him in the leadership at Luthuli House will go a long way in appeasing the bruised province.
If Ramaphosa ever needed a sign that he has the backing of his allies, the outcome of this election handed to him by the likes of Zamani Saul, Oscar Mabuyane, Muzi Chirwa, Reuben Madadzhe and even Paul Mashatile is the biggest nod to finally bolster him to drive his transformation agenda.