President Jacob Zuma’s unprecedented move last week to report back on a nine-point plan addressing challenges facing the economy including the electricity crisis, is believed to be an indication of an imminent cabinet reshuffle.
Independent Media understands that several ministers in troubled sectors of government are under the microscope and could fall victim to what would be Zuma’s third reshuffle since coming to office in 2009.
While the possibility of a reshuffle has been mooted since the death of Collins Chabane, the late minister of Public Service and Administration, it was reignited after Zuma’s unprecedented action this week.
Zuma this week brushed off the urgency of replacing Chabane – and by implication a cabinet reshuffle – saying that there was no time limit on appointing a replacement.
“Why not replace the late Minister Chabane? That’s the business of government.
“Government takes its own time. There is no time limit – that we have got to do it within this (time).
“So it will certainly be done, at the right time, at the right moment,” he said.
Senior sources in government and the ANC have raised doubts about whether the president would want to reshuffle his cabinet before the ANC’s national general council (NGC), due to take place in October.
The NGC is expected to audit work done by the ruling party, particularly in government, since the start of the current National Executive Committee’s (NEC) term at the party’s national conference in 2012.
One NEC member said although possible, it was unlikely a reshuffle could take place before the party took stock at the NGC, and that politically it would be “uncomfortable” as the NGC was likely to kick-off the leadership debate ahead of the elective conference in 2017.
But it is understood an imminent shake-up, when it happens, could take place in the energy sector, with Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson and Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown facing the chop.
The country’s crippling energy crisis has not gone down well, with Zuma this week confirming it was shaving at least 1 percent off the economic growth rate.
Joemat-Pettersson is also in the driving seat of the lucrative procurement process of the country’ nuclear build project, whose cost to build nine nuclear power plants remain a subject of industry speculation.
Earlier this year she faced a grilling by MPs over the running of her department, during an exchange in which even ANC MPs came down hard on her for her department’s failure to meet even half its targets.
The energy sector in general was identified at the recent ANC lekgotla – in a document presented by secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, titled Radical Economic and Social Transformation – A reality or Myth – as among the sectors in crisis, and which were not helping in the ruling party’s attempt to transform the lives of the poor.
The crisis of state-owned enterprises, some of whom have been so badly run that they were taken away from the Public Enterprises portfolio, may yet prove to be the downfall for Brown.
SAA and the SA Post Office now fall under the ambit of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene at the National Treasury, while Eskom is under the stewardship of deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa through the “war room” established to look into the energy crisis.
Well-placed sources have hinted that Finance Deputy Minister Mcebisi Jonas and Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba could move sideways to different portfolios.
Sunday Argus