South African National Memorial, Union Buildings, Pretoria. (Photo: Wikimedia / Bernard Gagnon) | President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Photo: Gallo Images) 
In 2019, fresh from an election that gave the ANC a substantial 57% majority and two years after a tight contest for ANC leadership, President Cyril Ramaphosa took four days to announce his Cabinet. This was an unusually long time, but was explained away by the need to consult with ANC alliance partners, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party.
Ramaphosa’s presidential predecessors Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma had announced their cabinets, including changes to the portfolios, the day after their inaugurations.
Section 94 of the Constitution ends the terms of ministers and deputy ministers when the new president is sworn in. However, departments continue their work based on the annual performance and strategic plans already submitted to Parliament.
In 2024, Ramaphosa is two years into a decisively won ANC presidency, but at the helm of an ANC that plummeted to 40.2% at the polls – costing the party its governing majority.
Talks with other political parties like the DA, IFP, Patriotic Alliance (PA) and Good over more than a week led to a national unity government statement of intent signed as MPs were sworn in on Friday, 14 June.
Ramaphosa was duly re-elected, while ANC MP Thoko Didiza was elected National Assembly Speaker and DA MP Annelie Lotriet her deputy on the back of combined DA, IFP and ANC numbers.
Ramaphosa could take even longer to announce his new Cabinet than he did in 2019. Just like getting over the dotted line of the cooperation deal last Friday, talks on national executive posts may push out timelines. Talks had not started properly by Monday, it’s understood. Consultations would not only include ANC alliance partners, but also the leaders of political parties that are now part of this national unity government, in line with their cooperation agreement.
Let’s be blunt – a coalition by any other name is still a coalition. But if calling it a government of national unity (GNU) means capturing the historic moment in South African politics when South African voters broke the ANC’s grip on uncontested power, so be it.
Balancing act
Ramaphosa’s GNU Cabinet faces immediate challenges. The ANC is unlikely to let go of defence and international relations – and most if not all economic ministries – as both incumbent ministers Thandi Modise and Naledi Pandor are effectively out of a job once Ramaphosa swears the oath of office at the Union Buildings on Wednesday. They did not make it back to Parliament because they were too low on the ANC candidates lists.
However, Ramaphosa could use his constitutional discretion to appoint both Modise and Pandor as the two ministers from outside the National Assembly, according to Section 91(3)(c) of the Constitution.
But this could tether his hand elsewhere in the consultations. This could, for example, include getting outgoing police minister Bheki Cele back into Cabinet. Cele, who, despite widespread public criticism, is said to enjoy support among the current executive, also missed the cut-off to make it back to Parliament.
There’s speculation that the DA could get five Cabinet posts and the IFP two or three. At least a couple would go to the PA and one to Good, whose leader Patricia de Lille is the current tourism minister.
Read more in Daily Maverick: Five-party pact — PA and Good join government of national unity
In past cooperative cabinets, ANC presidents included the opposition as tourism and public works ministers – like De Lille in Ramaphosa’s administration – while under Mbeki, Azapo leader Mosibudi Mangena held the science and technology portfolio. In Zuma’s first executive, then Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder was deputy agriculture minister.
If the FF+ agrees to join the 2024 national unity government, it will, like the IFP, be its second stint in such a cooperative governance arrangement.
In the 1994 GNU, required by the interim constitution until at least the final supreme law was in place, the IFP held the ministries of home affairs, correctional services and arts, culture, technology and science. The National Party held tourism, environmental affairs, social development and minerals and energy – the last portfolio held by apartheid’s longest-serving foreign affairs minister, Pik Botha.
If history is an indicator, the 2024 partners in South Africa could share among them some serious ministries which could have an impact on South Africa’s socioeconomic development. However, it is understood the ANC would be unlikely to give up the security cluster ministries like defence, police, state security and home affairs – and the heavyweight economic ministries like finance, labour and perhaps trade and industry.
Reinflating Cabinet
Currently, there are 30 ministries and 36 deputy ministries. That’s more than the 28 ministries Ramaphosa had in his 2019 Cabinet which was reduced from 36 ministries by merging several portfolios like mineral resources and energy, higher education and science and technology, and environmental affairs and forestry and fisheries.
In the March 2023 Cabinet reshuffle, Ramaphosa appointed in his Presidency a new electricity minister and made planning, monitoring and evaluation a full ministry.
In the August 2021 reshuffle, the state security ministry was abolished and the function was assigned to the minister in the Presidency, while human settlements and water and sanitation – that merged in 2019 – were again separated.
In the February 2023 State of the Nation Address (Sona), the president had undertaken a reduction of the executive in an echo of his 2019 pledge to restructure the size and shape of government.
“... I have instructed the Presidency and National Treasury to work together to rationalise government departments, entities and programmes over the next three years. National Treasury estimates that we could achieve a potential saving of R27-billion in the medium term if we deal with overlapping mandates, close ineffective programmes and consolidate entities where appropriate,” said Ramaphosa in the 2023 Sona.
In June 2024, ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula raised the possibility of a larger Cabinet to accommodate all cooperation partners. ActionSA and the South African Medical Association raised concerns over reinflating the size of the executive.
“ActionSA... urges the ruling coalition to reduce the number of government departments to approximately 20 and to eliminate unnecessary deputy minister positions in all departments. We believe this will free up funds to be redirected towards critical areas like service delivery and the maintenance of critical economic infrastructure,” said the party’s parliamentary leader Athol Trollip in a statement at the weekend.
Ramaphosa’s Cabinet and executive, including deputy ministers, will get the GNU officially on the road and test the much-touted new way of doing politics and governance in South Africa’s 30-year-old constitutional democracy. DM