In the hot seat — John Steenhuisen on ‘very challenging’ GNU talks, his qualifications and priorities as new Minister

Merit based appointment doesn't mean the most educated, it means the best available person for the job. How many of our cadres in parliament with degrees from universities are useless at the job assigned to them? A good leader is not necessarily a person with the best education credential, it is the person who effectively chooses and uses their team wisely to get the best outcome. I do however firmly believe that government positions should come with minimum education requirements as well as minimum experience requirements in the same field that they will be responsible for. You cannot take a person who is trained as a teacher and put them in charge of Police, that is a recipe for disaster as we have seen over the past 30 years. We need to get away from cadre politics and start selecting the right people, making them responsible, putting the checks and balances in place and then holding them to account for their delivery... only then will we see the country moving in the right direction.

The DA hopeless? I live and farm in North West and this province is in a mess...serious mess! I have just traveled to Western Cape and the contrast between here and there is like night and day! The roads there are exceptionally good and deteriorate by the km as you travel north. I have been treated at a hospital here: what an unbelieveably bad experience! ( a private one!) I was treated at the Government hospital in Vredenburg for an accident and the contrast between these two facilities is one again...night and day. There it was efficient, friendly, compasionate and very professional. Here the nurse pocketed half a syringe of pain medication meant for my pain relief! Our president has heard the nation; put together a GNU that can work... If only fools will stop their devisive and obviously very biased retoric. All strength to our new cabinet. May they reverse the adverse impact of the politic of the last 30 years of decline in our country.

Really? Compared to the ANC in the rest of the country, the Western Cape has outperformed the rest of the country by centuries. While the rest of the country regressed under the rule of the ANC, the Western Cape took up the challenge and developed industry and trade that caused the "semigration" of business and economy from everywhere else in SA to the WC province. That is the proof of meritocy in action vs the ANC cadre employment in the rest of SA. The ANC has proved how useless they are as a governing party.

Obvious you are an ANC or EFF supporter Tumelo, and hate to see another party who can actually reform the incompetent ANC government. The tragic irony is that the ANC have run this country into the ground and people like yourself kept on voting for them.

Tumelo, it would be wonderful if we had a system similar to Nordic countries that separate technocrat departmental functions from politicians that want to push whatever party’s policy. Let’s say I had expert level skills in Health. There is not a chance in the world that I would subject myself to our system whereby as Minister of Health I cannot do what is required, but have to adapt to the line as influenced by party policy, the labor unions, media and social media. Subject matter experts are accustomed to doing 120 things from a supply of 80. When policies get involved, the outcome is 50 from 150. Our health and education ministries are prime examples. We out-spend per capita and % of GDP places like India and China by factor of 200% but achieve half of what they do. Imagine the outcry in SA if the minsters of finance, education and health got together and recommended a One Child Policy until 2050 in SA to lift us out of the hole we have excavated! That is the rational policy, but will never get implemented. When it comes to ministers with admired track record, the ANC record is abysmal. I battle to think of four that I would appoint in a company or foundation. I can’t say that at local level anybody in my town political cadres (DA) that there is even one I would appoint. Cadre deployment has hurt us more than we can calculate. There is no public in ‘public service’, only power and influence and ego and corruption.

The world is full of well-educated fools.

One should never make the mistake of letting politicians believe that they were elected because of their expertise. Almost none of them are experts in the portfolios for which they are supposed to provide political leadership. Politics requires no qualificatuions. The civil servants are supposed to be the experts. Unfortunately, the ANC have put incompetent politicians in those role as well, to disastrous effect.

This is rather disingenuous and more so from Steenhuizen. Trevor Manual had a post-matric qualification along with some training that was provided to a lot of cadres pre-1994 by Goldman sachs, the IMF and world bank. Secondly, you compare the skills of a man in the 19th century to what is needed in today’s sophisticated world- both you and steenhuizen have posited false equivalences. Thirdly, This chap and his ilk in the DA are hopeless: for a party that has ‘championed’ meritocracy for yonks has the least educated and qualified candidates to oversee ministries. What a tragic irony.

Yip. Zuma only had standard 3

Leadership ability is not defined by education. There are plenty examples in history of bad educated leaders and good uneducated ones - and visa versa. A good leader surrounds him/herself with good people.

A lovely thought, but it's going to be 50% about farm murders and 50% about ensuring farmers are making money. Not necessarily bad, but expecting some kind of environmental awareness is a stretch for the neoliberals.