Meet the Western Cape’s youngest cabinet member

Making finance fun is a serious priority for the Western Cape’s youngest cabinet member, Deidré Baartman.

Baartman, 33, was appointed the provincial minister of finance in June. The Western Cape is unique in that members of the executive council are ministers, rather than MECs, because it has a provincial constitution (the only one of the nine provinces) which is certified by the Constitutional Court.

She brings experience and a track record in finance legislation and economic policy to the role.

Baartman tells the FM she uses plain language on various platforms to explain the province’s finances so that members of the public — “even Aunty Sarah on the ground” — can understand how taxpayers’ money is spent.

Instead of saying “cost-effectiveness” she speaks about “value for money”. She describes public procurement as “how government buys and sells and builds stuff”.

On TikTok and Instagram she succinctly announces to her many followers her four priorities for her first term:

• Ensure that the residents of the Western Cape get their fair share in funding;
• Make their money work for them;
• Make it easier to do business with government; and 
• Diversify revenue.

Baartman grew up in Gqeberha and obtained her LLB and LLM (in public procurement law) from Stellenbosch University. She was admitted as an advocate of the Western Cape High Court in 2017.

She moved to the public sector and politics to work towards justice for communities.

Baartman has served as a member of the Western Cape provincial parliament since 2019 and was chair of the standing committee on finance, economic opportunities & tourism, as well as the budget committee. This has given her insight into and knowledge of the fiscal process, its limitations and any room for improvement.

 [In  any procurement system ... value for money  ... ] is your primary goal. Any secondary socioeconomic goal should be over and above this

Baartman sees her department as an “enabling” partner of other departments.

“During my term I would love to explore how we can use technology, and especially AI, to make budgeting and finance more transparent. Technology can help us plan future scenarios and make sure we understand what the future demand for service delivery will be.”

Baartman says campaigning for this year’s election was heavily focused on jobs, energy, safety and dealing with poverty. “We now need to make sure that in our programmes we can address the poverty we encountered and can deliver on the promises we made.”

Baartman mentions public procurement, the subject of her master’s degree. She is highly critical of the Public Procurement Act, recently signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa, and believes its focus on centralisation and race-based preferential criteria may be unconstitutional.

“When we think innovatively about procurement and being able to address disadvantages, the type of conversation I would like to see is: how do we actually procure better for nutrition? How do we procure better for building schools, for energy security? How do we procure better for developing SMMEs so that it benefits those who are now disadvantaged and does not only advantage those who keep on being advantaged over the years?

“It doesn’t help if we are making a small number of the elite richer instead of making the pool of suppliers in the public procurement system larger.”

Baartman says value for money lies at the heart of any procurement system. “That’s your primary goal. Any secondary socioeconomic goal should be over and above this.”

Services should be as close to the people as practically possible, says Baartman. “The constitution is quite clear when it comes to procurement, that the National Treasury’s job is to put a framework in place so that we know how we should do it or in what way we can do it. But it’s up to us to write our own policy and to develop our own system. It’s not up to the Treasury to write the policy for us.”

Other areas that require attention are processes which are slow to respond to crises and disasters. “Getting resources, goods and services to the people, and rebuilding, should be fast enough, so procurement and budgeting need to be more agile.”

Baartman would like revenue streams for provinces to be diversified. “We need to start exploring more alternative and/or blended financing, including borrowing for infrastructure, so that we are able to build more and ‘build back better’, especially after disasters, so that we can have infrastructure-led growth.”

It has been a busy year for Baartman; among other achievements, she was awarded her master’s degree with a distinction in one subject, public procurement policy.

To wind down she tends her seaside garden — if she arrives home in time. And, according to one of her Instagram posts, if she is running late she gardens in her pyjamas.