Western Cape premier Gerald Morkel on Friday reshuffled his cabinet, giving provincial Democratic Party leader Hennie Bester the controversial community safety portfolio.
Cutting the size of the cabinet from 12 to 10 members, he restored New National Party maverick Peter Marais to favour, putting him in charge of social services and poverty relief.
Morkel also axed acting social services MEC Freda Adams, who is being probed for alleged abuse of Independent Development Trust funds while she headed a Western Cape school.
The changes are the first since Morkel's NNP and the DP - which have ruled the province as a coalition since last year's elections - formed the Democratic Alliance in June.
The Western Cape African National Congress said in reaction that the appointment of a cabinet dominated by whites, and containing no blacks, signalled an ANC victory in the coming local government elections.
Bester's appointment follows a decision earlier this week by his predecessor MEC Mark Wiley to quit his post, apparently after being offered the health portfolio in the new cabinet.
The ANC claimed he had been muscled out by Bester, but in public Wiley merely cited his frustration at his lack of powers as a provincial police minister as his reason for quitting.
Bester, previously MEC for business promotion and tourism, told a media briefing on Friday that the DP had not insisted on having the safety portfolio.
"We don't make demands," he said. "We indicated to the premier that we would be prepared to take that portfolio. Otherwise I would not be sitting here."
Referring to the taxi-bus conflict in the province, he said he found it very difficult to accept that one could negotiate effectively in a climate of violence.
"We have to review the negotiation process currently under way," he said. "It's difficult to negotiate whilst people involved in these negotiations may also be involved in... destablising activities."
Announcing the appointments earlier, Morkel jokingly referred to community safety as "the graveyard portfolio". Bester said he took this to mean it was a very tough portfolio.
Peter Marais was fired as social services MEC in February this year after his refusal to toe the party line, and faced disciplinary action from the NNP, but this was suspended after intervention by party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk.
Marais said in a statement he was pleased Morkel's faith in him had been restored, and promised not to fail him.
"The events of the past four months have made me mentally and spiritually stronger," he said.
DP education MEC Helen Zille and party colleagues Nick Koornhof (health) and Glen Adams (environmental and cultural affairs) all retain their portfolios. The other posts went to NNP appointees, with Leon Markovitz adding Bester's business promotion and tourism responsibilities to his finance portfolio.
Morkel said he was creating a department of the premier, that would include desks for gender, the disabled and youth, poverty eradication, rural development and information technology.
He said that though he wanted a racially representative cabinet, he had been unable at this stage to find a black candidate of the calibre he needed, and refused to make a token appointment.
The two unfilled posts would make it possible to appoint a black MEC in future.
The old cabinet had seven white and four coloured MECs, with one portfolio unfilled.
Of the ten portfolios in the new cabinet, six are filled by whites, and four by coloureds.
ANC Western Cape leader Ebrahim Rasool said in reaction to the reshuffle that this was the cabinet that would lead the ANC to victory in the coming elections.
"In this day and age the NNP and DP continue to put together a cabinet that perpetuates white dominance through six white ministers, decreasing the number of coloureds to four, and failing to address at all the need for (black) African representation," he said.
He said the ANC had won a major victory in the sacking of Freda Adams, and it was also now clear that Wiley had been lying when he said his departure had more to do with problems with national government than with pressures from inside the coalition.
"Gerald Morkel has stabbed him in the back, Hennie Bester has extended the dominance of the DP over the NNP, and the safety and security of our people continues to suffer," he said. - Sapa