President Ramaphosa Reshuffles South Africa's National Cabinet - at last!

SOUTH AFRICA - In Brief 05 Aug 2021 by Iraj Abedian

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A few minutes ago, President Ramaphosa finally delivered the long-awaited Cabinet reshuffle. After months and months of speculation, and following the destructive and unsettling insurrection of the last month, President Ramaphosa had no choice but to make changes to his Cabinet. At the same time, Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, had made it clear for months that his passion for the job had all but gone. In this light, President Ramaphosa's most critical changes were the appointments of new ministers of Finance, Health, and Defence. In place of Tito Mboweni, Mr Enoch Godongwana is now Minister of Finance. Mr Godongwana was the secretary general of the National Metal Workers Union of SA before joining politics back in the 1990s. He served as the Provincial Minister of Finance in the Eastern Cape Province in the early 2000s. Over the past decade, however, he has been the Chairman of the Economic Transformation of the ANC. In the public discourses around the approaches to economic policy he has become increasingly more agnostic. He is not a Tito Mboweni and is unlikely to hold a solid line when it comes to the much-needed fiscal consolidation. Overall, President Ramaphosa missed an opportunity to right-size his Cabinet- it remains too large, costly and unwieldy. Three years ago, he promised to restructure the Cabinet and make it 'lean and mean'; yet today's announcements marginally enlarges the Cabinet. Effectively, Ramaphosa has come to accept the current size of the Cabinet. Yet, all considered the changes he has made are positive for the functioning of his government.