With the elections well and truly behind us, one looks forward to ‘normal’ service resuming from the government. The self-imposed ‘embargo’ on any meaningful decision-making needs to end swiftly, and the president and his (new) team must take charge.

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Key to turning his ‘new dawn’ rhetoric into a reality will be the make-up of the team, essentially his cabinet and heads of strategic government institutions.

New blood

There is a fervent hope and expectation that the president will take the opportunity to inject some new blood into his executive, and finally put an end to the rotation of mundane and poorly performing individuals.

As Adriaan Basson writes in his online column, the likely list of ministers includes some who have served for 20 years or more, under three former presidents, and as he puts it ‘if they couldn’t achieve what they had wanted since 1994, they are not going to do it now…’ He is urging President Ramaphosa to be ‘innovative and daring’ in his final selections.

Major impact

Furthermore, he has the discretion to appoint two ministers who are not MPs, and this also provides the opportunity to identify and appoint top-quality technocrats who could make a major impact on policy making and implementation.

The expectation that ‘scandal tainted’ incumbents will be swiftly removed, notwithstanding their supporters pushing the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ line, is also a huge factor in instilling investor confidence.

The overwhelming flood of evidence given under oath at the various commissions should be enough for the president to take action.

Many commentators are calling for the end of cadre deployment, urging that the interests of the state need to be placed above the interests of the ruling party.

Entrenched

This is a sound argument in my view, as the reason for cadre deployment was premised on the need for the ruling party’s policies to be entrenched at all levels of government. Twenty-five years into a democracy led by the same party, this can surely still not be the case.

The final composition of the executive will signal to the country whether the president really intends culling the patronage networks that have led to what the COO of Business Unity South Africa, Busisiwe Mavuso calls ‘industrial scale looting’,  and intends to appoint capable people who will speedily turn around the performance of the government. If some of them happen to be cadres of the ruling party, I expect few complaints to be heard.

After matriculating, Vijay Naidoo studied Economics in the UK. Upon his return, he joined the family construction business as MD for 10 years.

He subsequently joined his sister in their furniture manufacturing business as director for quality assurance and operations. He was responsible for all quality aspects of their products, and led the project to the business achieving an ISO 9000 quality accreditation. As an export focused business, this was important for our international competitiveness.

Mr Naidoo has an abiding interest in quality management and productivity improvement, particularly in manufacturing.

More recently, he has focused a lot of his time on giving back to the community by way of mentorship of small businesses and sitting on the executive of the South Coast Chamber of Commerce. He also sits on the Board of the Ugu South Coast Development Agency.

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