THE deadly riots which rocked KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng is the clearest indication yet that President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Cabinet are missing in action and out of touch with the mood of the country, say some of the country’s political analysts.
Against the background of mounting anger and pressure on Ramaphosa to act decisively against ministers within the country’s security cluster for the government’s catastrophic failures in pre-empting the unrest, political economist Moeletsi Mbeki says these failures have proven that there isn’t a Cabinet to reshuffle.
According to Mbeki, a fit Cabinet would consist of ministers who engage with each other on matters concerning the country and seek ways to improve the state.
“It does not matter who enters the Cabinet because there is no Cabinet. Each minister is working in his or her own silo without consultation or co-ordination with other ministers. This came out very clearly during the recent events in KZN and Gauteng. The president said there was an insurrection, the minister of defence (Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula) said it was criminality and thuggery, the minister of intelligence (Ayanda Dlodlo) said that she had informed the police minister of the coming insurrection, the minister of police said he was not informed… so it shows there is no Cabinet.
This was a major security threat, but there was no discussion of the nature of the threats and what should be done with it. What this showed us for the first time is that there is actually no Cabinet in South Africa,” said Mbeki. During a tour of vaccination sites in Gauteng last week, Ramaphosa confirmed that he was mulling a “reconfiguration” of his Cabinet.
”The issue of reconfiguring the Cabinet is an ongoing consideration by any president. You look at how you deploy the people you are working with, and how you place those people to execute various tasks. So it is an ongoing process of evaluation and all that. It’s not something that we would say is an outlandish process. We continue to look at it,” he said.
However, since making these remarks, the status quo has remained, fuelling speculation that Ramaphosa is indecisive and is reluctant to act against his ministers.
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Source: IOL
