GNU cabinet: Ramaphosa's delicate balancing act

After weeks of tense negotiations, President Cyril Ramaphosa finally announced his national executive on Sunday night, a mixture of young and experienced, friends and foes, including those whose political outlook is as diverse as night and day.

After 15 months as minister of public works and infrastructure, Sihle Zikalala, the former chair of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal aligned to Ramaphosa, was demoted to deputise the DA’s Dean Macpherson in the same portfolio. Mondli Gungubele, once a close ally of the president, suffered a similar fate in communications and digital technologies. He had been the political head of the portfolio since March 2023, the last time Ramaphosa shuffled the executive.

On Sunday night, he made way for one of South Africa’s rising stars in Solly Malatsi, 38, also the DA’s national spokesperson.

While the constitution empowers the president to appoint the executive as he or she sees fit, Ramaphosa’s hand was forced in assembling the team to assist him run the new administration in a government of national unity (GNU).

It is the biggest executive since 1994, with 32 ministers and 43 deputies selected from nine of the 11 political parties that are part of the GNU.

With 11 political parties — ANC, DA, IFP, Patriotic Alliance (PA), Freedom Front Plus, GOOD, PAC, UDM, Al Jama-ah, Rise Mzansi and the United Africans Transformation (UAT) — forming the GNU it was expected that the national executive will be enlarged as parties jostled for positions and Ramaphosa tried to keep the new partners happy. Rise Mzansi and UAT are the only two parties that didn’t get a position in the executive.

Ramaphosa acknowledged this in his speech saying: “In the course of the sixth democratic administration, we indicated our intention to reduce the number of portfolios in the national executive.

“However, due to the need to ensure that the national executive is inclusive of all the parties to the GNU, this has not been possible.”

The DA accepted six cabinet portfolios, down from the 10 it was demanding a week earlier and six deputy minister positions, while the ANC retained 20 ministers and 33 deputies. The IFP had two ministers and two deputies, with the PA, FF Plus, PAC and Good each getting one seat in the cabinet.

Ramaphosa managed to keep the DA away from the much sought-after trade, industry and competition (DTIC), a key department among the blue party’s preferred portfolios.

The DTIC oversees a number of strategic programmes clustered around the themes of industrial development, trade export and investment, regulation, broadening participation and administration of professional standards, licensing and accreditation.

Instead Ramaphosa gave it to Parks Tau, promoting him from the ministry of co-operative government and traditional affairs, where he was a deputy minister. Tau was one of the ANC negotiators and among the brains that crafted the statement of intent that outlines the fundamental principles of the GNU deal.

Tau’s deputies are Zuko Godlimpi, who at 32 is the youngest member of the executive and a former economic researcher in the same department. The DA scored a deputy in this portfolio in Andrew Whitfield, who is the party’s provincial leader in the Eastern Cape and who also served in the police portfolio committee in the sixth parliament.

DA leader John Steenhuisen has been appointed minister of agriculture. The ministry has been split from land reform. The offer for this portfolio broke a deadlock which threatened to collapse the GNU cabinet deal last week.

This was when Ramaphosa reneged on a promise to give the DA the DTIC, and instead offered it tourism. The DA threatened to walk away, but a last-minute offer of agriculture clinched the deal.

DA insiders said agriculture was more appealing than tourism because it has a greater economic leverage and a bigger on-the-ground impact.

In the end, DA members were appointed ministers in portfolios across all five clusters of the cabinet.

“This means that, for the first time ever, the voices of DA voters will be heard in every sector and in every room where decisions are made about our country’s future,” said Steenhuisen on Monday.

In the economics cluster, the party will use its influential cabinet seats and deputy minister roles to pursue rapid growth and job creation, he said.

Steenhuisen said the sheer weight and spread of the 12 portfolios — six cabinet and six deputy minister appointments — amount to a recognition that the DA had a meaningful and vital role to play in the reconstruction of the country.

“The DA was never in this for positions for their own sake, which is why we refused to accept watered-down compromises, and why we drove a hard bargain at times to ensure that the portfolios we get are of real substance.”

IFP leader Velenkosini Hlabisa, FF Plus' Pieter Groenewald and PAC's Mzwanele Nyhontso were among the big winners following their respective appointments to the influential Cogta, correctional services and land reform portfolios respectively.

Ramaphosa noted that in forming the national executive, he had to ensure that the incoming government will be effective, that it will have people with the experience, skills and capabilities to deliver on its mandate.

“It is important that we deploy into positions of responsibility people who are committed, capable and hard-working, and who have integrity.”

While the jury is out on how committed, capable or hard-working the new team is, the president has certainly performed a political balancing act.