Cape Town - The IFP says that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cosmetic changes to his Cabinet was a series of missed opportunities.
National spokesperson Mkhuleko Hlengwa said it was expected of Ramaphosa to reward comrades with cabinet postings as he needed to manage competing factions within his party.
“What we have witnessed is just a continuation of his super-bloated, mega Cabinet and the ongoing centralisation of power. Now the Presidency includes the President, the Deputy President, no less than four Ministers and multiple Deputy Ministers,” Hllengwa said.
He also said key areas of daily societal concern such as crime, poverty, unemployment and inequality were left untouched and the under-performing ministers remained firmly in their jobs.
“Not only does the President appear to be unmoved by the prevailing challenges faced by the people of South Africa, he backtracked yet again in relation to streamlining his Cabinet, with the addition of new Ministers and Deputy Ministers,” he said.
Hlengwa said the new ministries equated to more money coming out of the public coffers to fund these new offices.
Freedom Front Plus leader Petrus Groenewald said Ramaphosa did absolutely nothing to address the two most significant problems faced by the country and its people, namely power and crime.
“Concerning the power crisis, the President appointed Dr Kgosientso Ramokgopa as the Minister of Electricity, which is basically no more than a project manager.
“In addition, Bheki Cele is still firmly rooted in his office as the Minister of Police while the country is engulfed in crime.
“It is abundantly clear that the President has no real will to save the country from its predicament,” Groenewald said.
“Ultimately, the President cemented his own position with these changes at the expense of the people of South Africa,” he said.
GOOD party secretary-general Brett Herron said Ramaphosa failed to take the bull by the horns, instead choosing to retain under-performing and corruption-implicated individuals in his re-shuffled Cabinet.
“Many South Africans, who were deeply hopeful for signs of a substantial reconfiguration that would signal the President’s commitment to the fundamental transformation that South Africa desperately needs, will go to bed disappointed.
“They will feel, with some justification, that the President has put his own, and his party’s interests, above those of the people of the country,” Herron said.
However, he said GOOD leader Patricia de Lille, who was retained in the cabinet, has proved an exemplary Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure when she was shifted to the tourism portfolio.
Herron also said the establishment of a second new ministry for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation under Maropene Ramokgopa was potentially positive as the state has fundamentally battled to implement its policies.
He said it would be nice to think that the new Minister of Transport, Sindisiwe Chikunga will make a better fit for this critical position than her many recent predecessors.
"It is regrettable that the President has neither trimmed the size of the executive, as he promised to do when elected four years ago, nor taken the opportunity to significantly reduce the average age of the structure by removing old wood and injecting more young people,“ Herron said.
Cape Times