President-elect Cyril Ramaphosa may not be able to deliver on his promise to cut the size of his cabinet as the ANC scrambles to accommodate parties that helped him get elected for a second term this week.
According to ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula, Ramaphosa could keep the status quo or even expand his cabinet.
The ANC, the DA, and the IFP are expected to resume talks in the coming days about how the parties that joined the government of national unity (GNU) will be represented in Ramaphosa’s new cabinet.
Other parties that signed the agreement include the Patriotic Alliance and GOOD. The parties are set to conclude negotiations before the president’s inauguration on Wednesday.
Mbalula told the Sunday Times that parties in the GNU will in the coming days “be engaging with the president”.
“And even the ANC itself, remember our position as the ANC was to implement a leaner government,” he said, noting that Ramaphosa cut the number of ministers in 2019 and promised further rationalisation.
“But the GNU has thrown a possibility of maintaining the status quo or expanding on that … Those are the things that the ANC is going to be interrogating and giving the president a mandate — the shape and the size and the principles of the GNU itself,” said Mbalula.
Apart from representation in the cabinet, negotiations are expected to include who will control which committees in parliament. Deputy president Paul Mashatile is expected to keep his position. Insiders said the DA will negotiate for a minimum of five cabinet posts — and has its eye on the departments of agriculture and trade, industry & competition.
However, an ANC insider said the party would not give away “too many” cabinet positions to the opposition. A senior ANC leader said the DA was likely to be offered two cabinet positions and a maximum of four deputy ministers.
Even though the IFP was yet to communicate its demands, the party was likely to get one minister position and two deputy ministers. Ramaphosa may also appoint leaders from the PA and GOOD to his executive.
Senior ANC leaders said the party was likely to keep all economic ministries. It was also likely to keep control of home affairs, international relations, defence and state security. However, it was open to negotiating other portfolios such as police and the two education posts.
We didn’t want to go in and be arrogant. We wanted to be mature about things and not make unreasonable demands, so over the next couple of weeks, we will then start the discussion about portfolios
— John Steenhuisen
They said the ANC did not intend to apportion cabinet posts according to the percentage of the vote its partners in government received last month.
Although names were not discussed this week, the Sunday Times understands that Naledi Pandor is likely to keep her job as minister of international relations & co-operation. Pandor — who did not make the cut to return to parliament — would be appointed through the president’s constitutional discretion.
The DA in its engagement with the ANC is said to have proposed that portfolio committee chairs should not come from the same party as the ministers running the departments. The ANC is said to not be opposed to this.
The ANC’s national executive committee decided to invite other parties to form a GNU with it during intensive discussion following the election in which the party’s support plunged to 40%. The GNU option was crafted to deal with internal discontent about having the DA, which won 21%, as coalition partner. The EFF refused to join a GNU that includes the DA.
Mbalula told the Sunday Times that the ANC had not shut the door on the MK Party, headed by its disaffected former president Jacob Zuma. “The EFF has shown its colours. They are flip-floppers, ideologically bankrupt. MK, we will engage with them. We will continue to engage with MK. We will talk to Zuma. We are not going to stop talking to him. Hopefully along the way we will find each other.”
Mbalula and Ramaphosa are facing a possible revolt from within as some party leaders are said to be unhappy about the working relationship with the DA. But Mbalula rejected the view that the ANC had effectively formed a coalition with the DA, dismissing it as “propaganda”.
“There is no DA-ANC coalition. It’s finding expression in a GNU. The issue of the ANC-DA deal has been propaganda thrown out by those who wanted to hamstring the processes of the GNU.
“We are no longer going to be blackmailed. We subscribe to what we believe in terms of the processes that we believe in. We can’t be told by people who have brought us below 50% who to work with,” he said.
“Six-million people want the ANC to lead and survive. They want us to serve the national democratic revolution, including our allies. There is no issue like the DA that is thrown from time to time, that we’ve got a deal with the DA.”
But some NEC members confirmed that senior leaders were opposed to the current GNU.
“The sense you get from comrades is that it’s mixed feelings,” one insider said.
“Those who stand to benefit, because they see themselves as potentials for the executive, they see this thing as ideal. But those who are leaning towards the Left, they see it as a betrayal of the promise to liberate the people of South Africa.
“Black people have not entirely healed from the wounds of the past, so they see the DA as a white party and they now see you [ANC] enabling a white [DA] to govern,” said the insider.
Those who are leaning towards the Left, they see it as a betrayal of the promise to liberate the people of South Africa
— ANC source
DA leader John Steenhuisen told the Sunday Times it had been important to get the GNU deal over the line on Friday. It had been made possible by assurances from Ramaphosa about his goals and a commitment he made to be fair, rational and reasonable in how the cabinet is appointed and chosen, Steenhuisen said.
The signing of the deal saw ANC and DA MPs voting together in electing Ramaphosa for his second term, and in the election of Thoko Didiza as speaker of the National Assembly and the DA’s Annelie Lotriet as her deputy.
“I am relieved, but I will feel more relieved once phase 2 is over because that is going to be the policy stuff and what the priorities are,” Steenhuisen said after Friday’s parliamentary sitting.
He said talks so far had not touched on who would get what posts.
“I’m saying this with absolute honesty, there has been no discussion about positions. We’ve conceded that the ANC is the largest party, almost twice our size. They will have the president, deputy president and speaker. We conceded.
“We didn’t want to go in and be arrogant. We wanted to be mature about things and not make unreasonable demands, so over the next couple of weeks, we will then start the discussion about portfolios and obviously the president will indicate where he thinks people can best serve.”
Steenhuisen said the DA will then present its manifesto priorities and say: “This is what we promised the people of South Africa as the DA and these are the areas we’d like to be able to show some delivery on leading up to 2029, so that people can judge us going into those elections.
“It’s a big step for the DA, we are moving out of a purely opposition role to start a new journey on writing a new chapter for South Africa of co-operation and collaboration, particularly because it is so fundamentally important that the democratic centre holds in South Africa given the rise of the anti-constitutional march on the left, particularly by MK.”
The DA leader said there was support for “constitutionalists” who would form “a stable majority in the rational centre” so reforms could be implemented “to accelerate Operation Vulindlela, accelerate growth, attract investment and give the international community and investors confidence that this is a government that is able to not only be stable but to deliver”.
That is a wake-up call for the centrists to realise we’ve got to stop quibbling about the silly things. We’ve got to join hands and come together and form a bulwark
— John Steenhuisen
Steenhuisen said the DA brought “something unique” from its leadership experience in the Western Cape and various municipalities elsewhere.
Among the issues the party wanted to address was how government functions could be devolved down to local level to improve service delivery. “We hope to be able to bring those key elements to the table and that experience to strengthen a cabinet of all the talents with other parties’ representatives.”
The new era in which no party had an absolute majority would require maturity, he said.
“I think voters now are saying the time for the politics of finger-pointing is over. It’s now time for us to knuckle down and do what we need to build the country to go forward because if South Africa fails, all of us, rich and poor, black, white, Indian and coloured, rural and urban, will all suffer.
“So there's an imperative for us all to work together to be able to hold the democratic centre from the ravages of the rabid Left but also to start building an economy that grows because the more people you lift out of poverty, the more economic growth you create, the more people that are able to find work, the less attractive those rabid parties on the Left become.”
Referring to the MK Party, Steenhuisen said it was “quite scary” that a party that campaigned on scrapping the constitution and “abolishing the rule of law” had received 45% of the votes in KwaZulu-Natal and was now the third-largest party in parliament.
“That is a wake-up call for the centrists to realise we’ve got to stop quibbling about the silly things. We’ve got to join hands and come together and form a bulwark against that because that is the consensus that will enable the country to move forward.”
Steenhuisen said the delay in signing the GNU agreement on Friday had been caused by the need to find deadlock-breaking mechanisms.
In the end, the parties decided that where no consensus was possible, the principle of sufficient consensus would apply. “It’s going to require us to find that consensus, so that there’s no party that can gang up on the other one. It requires you to collaborate and consult a lot more.”
He said this would prevent some of “the more radical” legislation coming to parliament and would allow the parties to fix some of the things that went wrong in the past.
The DA leader, who is expected to take up a ministerial position himself, praised the ANC for showing maturity in the face of its elections setback.
“It’s not easy to be a majority party that has lost its majority. I have been quite encouraged by the maturity which the ANC has shown. They have accepted the election results, they haven't gone out and put the army on the streets or tried to desperately cling to power like we’ve seen in other countries in the continent but accepted the democratic outcome.
“They’ve maturely come to the table and said, ‘We don’t have a majority, we would like to form a majority, how can we do this, how can we collaborate and work together?’ And the whole process has been about give and take,” he said.
The deal has also seen the parties supporting each other in the election of speakers and premiers in the hung provinces.
“It was what is called a club deal or an omnibus deal. There were a variety of moving parts at play. They all worked together and it’s meant we’ve been able to form a government in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng and after today, we will have a president who now has the ability to form a government with over 65% majority in the house,” said Steenhuisen.
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