If you think President Cyril Ramaphosa’s new cabinet is full of dead wood, you should check out his 36 deputy ministers. You will weep. It is shocking just how much corruption, incompetence, treachery, arrogance and ignorance can be brought together by the ANC in the guise of public service.
Promoting the clueless Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula from the defence portfolio to parliamentary speaker is pretty bad, even for the ANC. And Ramaphosa told the Zondo Commission last week that David Mahlobo is facing possible investigation relating to his role at the State Security Agency during the Jacob Zuma years. Yet Ramaphosa has kept him as a deputy minister (water & sanitation) since 2018, wasting taxpayers’ money on him for the sake of ANC unity.
Maggie Sotyu was the Zuma lackey who, in 2008, while she headed the safety committee in parliament, led the destruction of the Scorpions crime-fighting unit. She has been rewarded with a deputy ministership at fisheries, forestry & the environment. She should be in jail for opening the doors to state capture by disbanding the one unit that could have stopped the rise of corruption in SA.
Another rank incompetent, Zoleka Capa, a scandal machine of note when she was mayor of the OR Tambo district municipality (she once gave Zuma cows meant for emerging farmers) is now deputy minister of agriculture. Expect Zuma to receive more cows.
At the end of Phumulo Masualle’s tenure as Eastern Cape premier in 2019, opposition political parties in the province were unanimous in describing his five-year term as "a complete failure". Even his comrades in trade union Nehawu threatened strikes if he did not leave. As finance MEC he presided over the misappropriation of R300m in funding for Nelson Mandela’s 2013 funeral.
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Dikeledi Magadzi was head of the Limpopo education portfolio in 2014 when five-year-old Michael Komape drowned in a pit latrine after Magadzi’s government failed to provide safe toilets. Reacting to Komape’s death, she callously told eNCA: "If something happens, so be it. I am not God." She has been promoted to water & sanitation as deputy minister, alongside Mahlobo.
Sdumo Dlamini split Cosatu because of his support for Zuma. In 2017, while thousands of Cosatu members marched for Zuma to leave office, Dlamini celebrated Zuma’s 75th birthday with him and said: "As you are my leader‚ and we tackle these issues‚ I need you to be strong."
He is now deputy minister of small business development. I kid you not.
Ramaphosa has pulled Zizi Kodwa into his office as deputy minister responsible for state security. Kodwa received numerous payments from EOH officials, it was alleged at the Zondo commission. Obviously these were for sweet nothing.
Noxolo Kiviet? She was premier of the Eastern Cape before Masualle. She helped break the Eastern Cape, and we are now to believe that she will do a sterling job at public works, where she is deputy minister.
In 2016, when the Hawks manufactured false charges against Pravin Gordhan, the then ANC Youth League secretary Njabulo Nzuza slammed Ramaphosa for publicly supporting Gordhan. He also said Zuma had "done very well" on the economy: "Yes, we have been downgraded by dubious institutions, but we continue."
Yet when Ramaphosa ascended to power he rewarded Nzuza with a deputy position at the strategic home affairs ministry.
So it goes. Below the deputy minister layer are numerous directors-general who are compromised and should not be allowed anywhere near a government office. For example, at the Zondo hearing Ramaphosa said that alongside Mahlobo the former SSA director-general Arthur Fraser was among those who may be investigated. Fraser is now in charge of correctional services, which has custody of the incarcerated Zuma.
A quick look through the list of deputy ministers forces one to ask: How many incompetents and corrupt individuals populate political positions at provincial and municipal level, where scrutiny is far less, or even nonexistent?
If such poor leaders can be appointed by a president who says he is committed to clean governance, just how many similar cadres work for corrupt municipalities?
New Dawn? Mmmmm.
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