PETER BRUCE: How would you remodel Cyril’s cabinet?

People groaned when President Cyril Ramaphosa announced his cabinet “reshuffle” a few days ago. It was arguably the most boring statement he has ever made. Basically he had two holes in the cabinet — environment minister Edna Molewa had passed away and home affairs minister Malusi Gigaba had resigned.

On social media there was great expectation. The presidency actually announced in advance that the reshuffle was coming and it wasn’t made at midnight, as Jacob Zuma was wont to do. Who would go? Bathabile Dlamini, for sure. Nomvula Mokonyane too, no doubt.

But, sadly, no. Ramaphosa was never going to launch what would have amounted to a full-on confrontation with the Zuma camp a few months ahead of an election. Instead he moved Siyabonga Cwele from telecommunications & postal services to home affairs. Then he collapsed the ministries of telecoms & post and communications into one and appointed a supporter, Stella Ndabeni Abrahams, to run a new communications & telecommunications ministry. The two departments, split by Zuma to create space for Faith Muthambi to control the SABC, will probably be merged after the election in line with Ramaphosa’s pledge to shrink Zuma’s bloated cabinet.

In the same spirit I thought it would be fun to try to shrink it myself. You can also play along. Here’s the most recent cabinet list. There are 36 people in it, including Ramaphosa and his deputy DD Mabuza. That’s just huge and very expensive. The DA reckons it can get the number below 20. I’m not so sure. I get to 21, which I reckon is pretty good, though obviously it depends on the people Ramaphosa picks as ministers after the next election.

And just before we start, you have to remember that Ramaphosa needs to hold his party together, mainly so it doesn’t turn on him. Or turn on him more. The patronage of the Zuma years will change its spots but it will still have to be there because while the next election will change the government it won’t change the ANC national executive committee (NEC) that Ramaphosa reports to.

Zuma perfectly understood the need to get the NEC behind him. That’s mainly why his cabinet (and their deputies) got so big. It was packed with NEC members. And it worked until late 2016 when tourism minister Derek Hanekom stood up at an NEC meeting and proposed a motion of no-confidence in then president Zuma.

So if Ramaphosa is going to shrink the cabinet expect a sharp increase in other patronage to keep the NEC sweet. The British use the House of Lords and a mountain of quangos to park people in well-paid jobs. A quango is, according to Wikipedia, “a quasi-autonomous nongovernmental organisation, given power and funding by government departments”.

“They can deliver public services, give advice or regulate behaviour,” says a BBC explainer. Think the forestry commission, the British council, national galleries. At one stage there were more than 800 in the UK. Many have been cut completely.

So, let’s cut our cabinet. First off, for me, would be to cut justice & correctional services, police and state security (intelligence) and bring them in under home affairs. Obviously you need strong leaders in prisons and the police and the spies but they don’t each need a minister to feed. We’re down to 33.

Then I’d cut small business development and economic development and tourism and tuck them into the department of trade & industry (DTI). Tourism is potentially our greatest export. Its economic importance needs recognition. Small business development is a joke and, with the right minister in charge, a DTI with wider responsibilities might be able to do some good for industry. Now we’re 30.

I’d add a new department — employment. And cut labour. That’s number-neutral but we need a minister responsible for creating employment, not for protecting current jobs. The best way to do that would be to encourage the creation of more employers. Come to think of it as I write, this could also go into the DTI. 29.

I’d recombine basic education and higher education & training (and seek a constitutional change to make education a national rather than a provincial competence). The current split is not a bad idea but the people running schools need to have a better awareness of what universities (and the wider economy) want. 28.

Women, a ministry located in the presidency, need not exist. Proof of that is that Bathabile Dlamini is currently the minister. Whatever statutory responsibilities it has could be transferred to social development. Similarly, human settlements (housing) belongs to public works. As does water & sanitation, and, probably, environment. 24.

There’s also no real need for the ministry of planning, monitoring & evaluation, also located in the presidency. Officials can do that stuff. Sport & recreation really doesn’t need to exist either. Give the budget to the education ministry. 22.

Co-operative governance & traditional affairs could (indeed, should) swallow rural development & land reform. 21.

And then I get a bit stuck. But it’s a good game. Try it yourself, using the list in the Wikipedia link I cited earlier in this article.

After a difficult week in our national life it was good to see Ramaphosa coming unambiguously to stand with public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan last night. It was an important moment. Judge Raymond Zondo, outside of whose commission of inquiry the EFF mounted its disgraceful protests last week, is also preparing to respond to them. I suspect it won’t be pretty. He may act slowly, but Zondo’s no baby.

And, meanwhile, Gordhan has this morning laid charges of crimen injuria against EFF leaders Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu for the wicked things they said about him last week. I’ve been charged with crimen injuria before, as editor of the FM years ago, and I can tell you it’s not funny. I got off on a technicality, but these two guys are in deep trouble.

The Sunday Times yesterday carried a very strong editorial slamming the EFF for its crude racism and fear mongering and I thought it was probably Barney Mthombothi’s magnificent column in the Sunday Times Op-ed that might have given Ramaphosa the final skop he needed to come out in support of Gordhan last night.

But as the establishment finds its voice with regard to the EFF and its tactics the real threat to the party comes from a tough and immensely courageous reporter called Pauli van Wyk at Daily Maverick. She has been digging away at the flows of money of the now looted and collapsed VBS Mutual Bank and it seems quite a lot of the looted money found its way into the lives of Malema and Shivambu. Read this stuff. It’s astonishing. They’re going to need some damned good lawyers. You’ll have noticed a copy of a bank statement in there. Trust me — where that comes from there’ll be many more. This is only just getting interesting.