Cabinet reshuffle: Ramaphosa recycling incompetence like others recycle waste

I write to you this letter as a concerned and patriotic citizen and a taxpayer of this beautiful country of ours.

On Monday evening, I “resiliently” and patiently waited with and hoped with keen interest to see you use your prerogative to fix your Cabinet and rid yourself the elements that make it difficult for you to perform your nation duties as a state president.

I also knew that you understood that your prerogative is not absolute and it must be used rationally. Part of your concerns, I thought, was to clear your Cabinet of the people who are in one way or another, implicated – directly or indirectly – in corruption and named in the Zondo commission report.

I also thought incompetence was the one thing that gave you sleepless nights. I also believed that you and I shared the same concerns regarding the state of crime, education, unemployment, and health.

I thought the stagnation in our scientific, innovative, industrial and economic development would be topmost of your priorities when applying your prerogative.

‘Electrocuted’

Sadly, in reshaping your Cabinet, you left all those departments intact! To say you unpleasantly surprised me would be an understatement.

I was actually electrocuted! Mr President, we see your Cabinet as a tool to rid this country of incompetence and corruption and we cannot be asking ourselves questions about the integrity of members you kept in your Cabinet.

You cannot talk about a competence-driven Cabinet and turn around and appoint known incompetent ministers and deputy ministers.

READ MORE: Recycling plastic and bottles is not only good for the environment, but also economically rewarding

‘Bloated Cabinet’

Mr President, it is a known fact that you have a bloated Cabinet. What is the wisdom in bloating it even further? What informs you that a failed premier can possibly and successfully manage the public service?

What is the wisdom of appointing someone as a deputy minister of small business development, a person under whose stewardship we lost our SA Airways, Passenger Rail Agency of SA and Transnet as a minister?

What was so difficult, Mr President, in using your prerogative to replace your ministers of police, basic education and higher education? Mr President, under the stewardship of your police minister, crime is increasing unabated.

Unemployment

Under your education ministers, this country has produced an unprecedented high number of unemployable youths – year on year.

On load shedding, I find it very difficult to understand your decision to appoint a fully-fledged minister to solve a “temporary” problem needing a team of engineers and crime specialists.

You have two ministers in charge of Eskom, as things stand, and you now brought another. Just how are the three going to function and cooperate when we know the first two could not?

Load shedding

My dream of eliminating load shedding is being deferred even further, Mr President. Mr President, in all fairness, you have to accept that your presidency – with the bloated Cabinet you have – is costing the taxpayers a lot of money.

You have so many deputy ministers whose jobs we can hardly see, except for the deputy police minister we occasionally see carried around by his boss as his briefcase.

You have so many ministers and deputies in the presidency, as if you are consolidating your personal empire, Mr President. If you were to seriously relook at most of your appointees, you will see that most are, in fact, redundant.

But, most importantly, you will save the taxpayers much more. Mr President, recycling human beings does not yield the same result as recycling objects.

Recycling plastic and bottles is not only good for the environment, but also economically rewarding. With human beings, once we reach our sell-by date, nothing is reversible any more.

We don’t recycle people. We invest in and develop people, particularly while very young and the reason for that is because we cannot recycle them. Thank you, Mr President.

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-Pule Monama is an independent commentator and a former Azapo leader