You never really know who among cabinet ministers is closest to the head of state unless you are part of the inner circle.
Sometimes you see a minister working closely with a president on one project or another, or even operating from within the presidency, and assume that they are Number One’s chief confidante.
I recall, for instance, in my early days as a political correspondent being assigned to talk to a cabinet member who was assumed to have an inside track on who would make it to the next executive.
The country had just had a general election in which the governing party had scored an emphatic victory. The president was due to be sworn in the next day for his second term and so I expected to find the minister in a jovial mood and willing to discuss the future.
Instead I found an anxious man who wasn’t certain about his own future and seemingly oblivious about the fate of others in the executive. Yet, out there, the perception was that he was one politician the president confided in before making major decisions.
Under a different president, I remember a story of another member of the national executive who was assumed to have a direct line to his boss.
One evening on a flight back from Cape Town, the minister was sitting comfortably in his business class seat when he saw the president’s chief of staff pass him without so much as a “hi”.
Panic set in. For days and weeks that followed the head honchos at Luthuli House and Cosatu House were fielding calls from the minister asking if he had offended the boss in any way and whether his position was still safe.
Even in cases where a minister is, in fact, in the president’s inner-circle, one should never assume this to be a permanent state of play.
One minute you are minister in the office of the president responsible for briefing the commander-in-chief on sensitive national intelligence and security issues, the next you have been dispatched to the thankless job of trying to save the Post Office, or on an impossible mission to turn Bafana Bafana into the soccer equivalent of Siya Kolisi’s world conquering Springboks.
Precarious is the state of being a minister.
Yet none of the above takes away from the reality that in any administration there are cabinet members whose words tend to carry more weight precisely because they are perceived to be close to the head of state and, presumably, to be speaking on his or her behalf.
In President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni is one such minister. She is by no means the only one, but that she is in the inner circle is regarded as a given in both politics and business.
This is not just because she is minister in the Presidency and cabinet’s official spokesperson. Long before she moved back to the Union Buildings she was viewed as one of the most influential individuals in the administration.
When there are important and urgent tasks to be carried out here and abroad, the president often uthuma yena (sends her).
Hence when she speaks there is every reason to take what she says seriously. Rightly or wrongly, she is seen as the closest to getting a quote or an interview from the president himself. And we all know the president does not give many of those.
However, the minister does not seem to fully appreciate the power and responsibility that comes with this perception.
Her angry remarks this past week, in which she accused the business community of manipulating the currency and the economy “to make sure the government collapses” are unbecoming of a person who speaks for both cabinet and the president.
Given the already high levels of distrust and hostility that exist between sections of the private sector and government, her remarks threatened to undo all the hard work by the president and business to forge closer ties for the sake of the country.
The Presidency has sought to distance itself from the claim that the private sector was engaged in the treasonous endeavour of engineering the collapse of a democratic government.
But it will surely leave a bitter taste in the mouths of investors, both local and foreign, to know that the administration that is urging them to join it in reconstructing the country harbours suspicions that they are all counter-revolutionary insurgents.
The rand manipulation saga, which has once again been thrust into the limelight after the admission of guilt by Standard Chartered, indeed demonstrates that corruption and wrongdoing are not limited to the public sector. It calls for strong and independent state institutions that are able to monitor adherence to the country’s rules and laws in both private and public sectors.
But it would be self-defeating for a government in desperate need of private sector partners to help recapitalise our ailing economy to declare entire industries as the enemy because of the actions of a few.
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