Publication: Mail and Guardian Issued: Date: 2005-12-23 Reporter: Reporter:

The A to F of Mbeki's Cabinet

 

Publication 

Mail and Guardian
Date

2005-12-23

Web Link

www.mg.co.za

 

Who is bottom of the class? Who are the stars? Who went AWOL? From Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour to Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk -- as well as a trio of opposition leaders -- we bring you the full Cabinet report card. Beware of imitations!

What the grades mean
A: Take a bow. You are doing an excellent job.
B: Good, but room for improvement.
C: You're OK, but that's all we can say for you.
D: Get your act together.
E: Do yourself and the country a favour: resign.
F: You are fired.

Read part two of the report card (from N onward, as well as party leaders and those who were AWOL)

Thabo Mbeki
President
Grade: B (state of the country); E (state of the nation)
There are two ways to grade President Thabo Mbeki this year: on the state of the country and on the state of the nation.

As the year ended, the consumer boom continued, suggesting retailers were heading for a bumper season to end a bumper year. Durban is expecting its biggest flood of holidaymakers in years, many of them black. The black middle class is helping to ramp up car sales and fuel a property boom.

Statistics SA employment figures released earlier in December also showed that formal jobs are being created. An additional 60 000 workers signed up in construction and manufacturing, suggesting that jobless growth may finally be in decline.

When Mbeki's overall legacy is assessed, it will reflect a focus on economics. He has handed stewardship of the new economic policy, the accelerated and shared growth initiative, to his deputy, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, to ensure that it continues when he steps down in 2009. For this he earns a "B", which will become an "A" once growth begins to have an effect on poverty.

Now almost 5%, growth is approaching the magical 6% target. Economists reckon that substantial job creation will begin when this figure is breached, though it is worth noting that India and Brazil, emerging economies with which South Africa is often compared, are growing much faster. Mbeki is looking increasingly to the East: he is using the state, both parastatals and the fiscus, to drive the economy, a step in the right direction.

But Mbeki's key poverty alleviation project - a mix of urban renewal and rural development nodes - has not come to much. While their defenders may defend them in a thousand PowerPoint presentations, the nodes have not made a national impact, as they should have started to do by now. Neither has the extended public works programme, the jobs effort Mbeki once claimed would help to halve unemployment by 2012.

Some brave steps are, however, planned for his last three years in office. As 2005 ended, his Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi hinted that the government may reduce the number of provinces. It is unclear whether we need this layer of the government at all, but even streamlining it should ensure that the cash awash at the national level makes its way to the ground.

Mbeki has placed a firm emphasis on skills acquisition; is pushing to end import parity pricing; and has ensured the licensing of the second network operator.

Why then has Mbeki declared 2005 his annus horribilis? The good news was overshadowed by the bad as he fired his deputy, Jacob Zuma, after Judge Hilary Squires said he had a "generally corrupt" relationship with the Durban businessman Schabir Shaik. But that move also saw Mbeki losing his grip of the ruling party.

His power began slipping at the national general council meeting in July, when delegates resisted moves to oust Zuma as the party's deputy president, and loosened further as the year progressed.

In October, party activists burnt T-shirts emblazoned with Mbeki's image outside the Durban court where Zuma appeared on corruption charges.

In the face of surging internal dissent, Mbeki did not lead the nation in this period. Other than veiled messages in his weekly ANC Online newsletter, he disappeared from public view. For this he earns an "E". This is backed by two surveys of metropolitan South Africans by Research Surveys, which found that Mbeki's ratings climbed stratospherically in July when he took decisive action against his deputy, but had slipped by last week.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
Deputy President
Grade: B
It is difficult to assess Mlambo-Ngcuka, as she has been in the job for less than six months. Her appointment was a stop-gap measure created by the controversial firing of Jacob Zuma by Mbeki in June. But she came from the minerals and energy portfolio with a reputation for shrewdness, pragmatism and straight talking, and appears to have taken to the deputy presidency like a duck to water.

Mlambo-Ngcuka's immediate problem was to win over supporters of Zuma, who tended to see her as the beneficiary of a political assassination. She wisely met potential critics such as the African National Congress Youth League and the Congress of South African Trade Unions to outline her plans. Except for the incident where she was booed while addressing a Women's- Day function in KwaZulu-Natal, she has proved adept at winning over actors across the political spectrum and forging consensus.

But it is early days yet. Mbeki has placed Mlambo-Ngcuka in charge of the government's ambitious plan to achieve 6% economic growth, which she has indicated will involve a fresh look at the country's labour laws. This will test her diplomatic skills to the limit. The mere suggestion of deregulating the labour market has already brought her into conflict with the trade unions. It was also roundly rejected by the ANC's branches at the party's national general council in June.

Mlambo-Ngcuka has also taken over leadership of the South African National Aids Council, displaying rare honesty by admitting that the government's Aids treatment programme should be doing better. She brought sweet music to the ears of land activists when she acknowledged that the willing seller, willing buyer principle could not form the basis of effective land reform. Perhaps her only faux pas was her unfortunate comment that South Africa should learn land reform lessons from Zimbabwe - whose approach to the issue has caused untold misery.

So far, Mlambo-Ngcuka has made the right noises. Next year, when she must start putting words into action, will provide the sterner test.

Ngconde Balfour
Minister of Correctional Services
Grade: D (2004 D)
Balfour visited numerous prisons this year, many after escapes and attempted break-outs, to encourage staff to "keep up the good work". Unfortunately for him, such motivational exercises fail to capture the public imagination. The sort of thing that does is the rape of a three-year-old by an offender whose sentence was remitted in June.

Balfour's statement of regret and explanations went unheard in the public outcry. Eventually the government spin-doctors stepped in to insist that, of the 65 837 offenders, ranging from parolees to inmates, just 185, or 0,28%, had reoffended after the general remission of six months. Cabinet stood by its man, saying that lessons needed to be learned but expressing general satisfaction with the process.

Balfour's dilemma is unenviable: police under public pressure to crack down on crime make more arrests, while courts set bail, which even petty offenders often cannot afford. And the jails, or correctional centres as they are now called, sit with more bodies than beds.

South Africa's 241 jails have space for 113 825 inmates, but accommodated more than 187 000 this year, including 52 000 people awaiting trial. In such conditions, the incarceration of juveniles under 18 continues to be problematic; human rights groups are still going to court to separate children from adults.

In a context of overcrowding, under-staffing persists - there is a shortage of about 8 000 warders in South Africa's prisons. Recruitment has been outsourced to three agencies after the department's adverts for 1 000 posts attracted no fewer than six million applications.

But Balfour's department has cracked down on prison corruption, bringing disciplinary charges against 175 staff under a new anti-corruption strategy. More action may follow once Judge Thabani Jali finalises his report. And, with the help of NGOs, correctional services has come up with some innovative rehabilitation programmes and internal administrative reforms that look good on paper. The department has started implementing the 1996 White Paper on rehabilitation in 36 jails.

On the labour front, the department and prisons staff unions clashed over working conditions, including the withdrawal of overtime payments calculated to cost the department up to R300-million.

In the closing months of the year a social worker was dismissed for insisting on wearing a scarf and untucking her shirt, according to Islamic precepts. Given the shortage of social workers in prisons, was such bureaucratic rigidity really justified?

Thoko Didiza
Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs
Grade: C+ (2004 C)
The slow pace of land reform continues to haunt Didiza, but she started the year by boldly trying to gee-up two underperforming departments, agriculture and land affairs, purging their directors general and appointing replacements. Insiders say the newcomers were told they had better start delivering.

The land summit was this year's major event for Didiza, but many felt it was more about political posturing than finding land reform solutions. The minister and her departments accepted the shortcomings of current policies and the need for change, but have put forward very little by way of alternatives.

Six months later, there has been almost no sign of what the government plans to do in response to the summit's resolutions. Critics say the minister and her officials failed to give enough input into discussions about the constraints they face in implementing resolutions, nor table proposals for alternative strategies to overcome the problems that all agree exist. They were described as "sipping water and nodding to almost all the suggestions", including a moratorium on farm evictions. Commercial farmers and the "willing buyer, willing seller" came out of the summit as scapegoats for the slow pace of land reform, while the government's lack of capacity was only mentioned in passing.

Didiza also had to deal with the controversy of expropriation. While some critics asked why it has taken so long for her to use the expropriation law, others complain the department is being too hasty. So far she has walked the expropriation tightrope hesitantly.

Post-settlement support continues to haunt the department. While Didiza has learned from past mistakes, too many reform beneficiaries are living in dismal conditions on their new land.

Black and white farmers get on well with Didiza, who has an open-door policy. Commercial farmers praise the way she has worked with them in agriculture's presidential working group. After stops and starts, the AgriBEE charter is also set to be implemented in the new year. Through fine-tuning and debate her agriculture department designed a new draft that was far more enthusiastically received than the first attempt.

One of Didiza's biggest successes was persuading Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel to give her a bigger budget for land reform. The department received an additional R6-billion for restitution.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Grade: C (2004 A-)
It is widely acknowledged foreign policy is driven from the Presidency and President Thabo Mbeki is, in essence, his own foreign minister. Several other ministers, among them Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota and Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi, have on occasion been deployed to pursue South Africa's foreign policy objectives.

In addition, foreign affairs is the only ministry with two deputies, Aziz Pahad and Sue van der Merwe.

Where does all this leave the woman formally in the portfolio? That she has embraced the involvement of others in "her affairs" is perhaps testimony that she feels secure in the job.

The president does all the heavy lifting on the foreign affairs front, as shown by his deep involvement in the Côte d'Ivoire and Democratic Republic of Congo peace processes. But it is Dlamini-Zuma who is entrusted with sorting out the fine print of the deals. Even her detractors pay tribute to her depth of knowledge and grasp of the problems on her beat.

Dlamini-Zuma has continued to assert herself forcefully in Africa and on the world stage, articulating African perspectives and becoming an increasingly important voice of the South and the developing world. Her no-nonsense style and bluntness at African Union gatherings, in particular, have earned her the respect of her overwhelmingly male peers. She is highly visible during debates and is credited with keeping the AU Peace and Security Council ticking.

Her refusal to criticise publicly the regime of Robert Mugabe, despite the latter's mounting human rights abuses, remains highly controversial. However, diplomats say she takes a much tougher stance behind the scenes.

The minister's abrasive character is frequently cited in explaining the alarming speed with which she moves through directors general. Her tendency to micro-manage and reluctance to draw on key staff, outside her inner circle, is said to have affected morale in her department. South African-based diplomats also complain about her inaccessibility and failure to keep appointments.

Dlamini-Zuma's raised middle finger to critics over sex-pest allegations levelled at a senior diplomat in South Africa's embassy in Indonesia remains another blot on her copybook.

She has managed, in public, to steer clear of the raging controversy in the ANC over the axing of her former husband Jacob Zuma. And despite her tag as Mbeki's lieutenant, she turned down the vice-presidency, displaying a shrewd grasp of the succession landscape, which could yet see her emerge as South Africa's first woman president.

By the end of the year, Dlamini-Zuma had set up diplomatic relations in 36 African countries, still short of her goal of "one mission, one country", but symbolic of a restructured foreign policy.

This year, she has also worked to ensure that South-South relations begin to take form. South Africa is part of a working alliance with India and Brazil and is also making important inroads into strategic relations with China, tomorrow's superpower.

Alec Erwin
Minister of Public Enterprises
Grade: B- (2004 B)
Erwin seems to have access to some great reserve of political Teflon - perhaps they make it at one of Denel's subsidiary companies. There were real problems on his watch this year, and he has avoided even talking about most of them.

He dismissed the damaging strike at South African Airways, caused in no small part by the man he appointed to run the airline, Khaya Ngqula, as an "operational issue" - muted squawks of fury from the airline's parent company Transnet notwithstanding. SAA duly reported a thumping loss for the first half of the 2005/06 financial year, and the minister remained unperturbed.

Clearly, Maria Ramos would love to be shot of SAA, but that is happening very slowly. Erwin puts this down to the complexity of separating pension liabilities and other intricate relationships between the two companies.

Transnet itself is showing signs of recovery, as Ramos wields the scalpel, but there are still profound operational problems, not least the persistent problem of derailments on its freight lines.

Still, it looks as if the giant conglomerate will soon be able to focus more closely on better operational performance, and that is in no small part owing to Erwin's backing for tough management action.

Denel was a disaster zone before Erwin took it over. And its new boss Shaun Liebenberg has been pushing every accountant in the place to make the scale of the disaster very clear. Reported losses didn't swell from an expected R350-million to R1,6-billion just because a few skeletons tumbled out of closets. There was a concerted hunt. Those losses have provided the political push needed to restructure Denel, and big chunks of it will now be sold off. The really pointless bits, like the soy protein plant, will go holus-bolus. The strategic ones will be part-sold to European strategic equity partners: SAAB and possibly EADS and Eurocopter.

But not without R5-billion more in government debt guarantees, courtesy of Erwin, who truly believes that this is good value for money because Denel will form the heart of a local aerospace industry. Whether such a creature will ever be able to remain in flight without massive government assistance remains to be seen, but it is the kind of gamble Erwin likes to take.

Meanwhile, Eskom, the most important and traditionally most profitable of the parastatals, is starting to lag behind in its ability to supply electricity to an economy growing much faster than foreseen. Unlike the Johannesburg blackouts, which can be squarely laid at the door of City Power, the Cape power outages were all the doing of Eskom, and will continue to be.

Its ability to keep the juice flowing as demand grows across the economy and Erwin strives to woo new, power-hungry customers will be the biggest test of the next three years.

The minister believes passionately in the power of massive, state-driven projects such as Coega, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor and the Airbus A400m purchase programme to boost long-term economic growth. It is all very well for the government to be bold where the private sector is not, but some of these projects have an air of grandiosity for its own sake.

More scepticism on that score, and less reluctance to bring the private sector into the heart of parastatal operations, would not go amiss.

Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi
Minister of Public Service and Administration
Grade: B (2004 C)
Fraser-Moleketi's devotion to her portfolio should be an example to thousands of public service drones who are yet to smell the winds of Batho Pele.

Her mission this year has been to create a single public service, which she sees as an antidote to inefficiency and inertia. She admits the public service shake-out of 2002 did not improve performance and led to a skills exodus.

The unification of the three tiers of government, first mooted in 2001 and slated for completion by 2009, will make all servants of the state employees of national government. Currently, councillors and officials are employed by their municipalities, each with its own employment regime - hence the often ludicrous salaries paid to managers of tiny, revenue-strapped local authorities. There is some concern that increased policy coordination could come at the price of further centralisation of power, but in general, the move to root out municipal torpor should be welcomed.

Fraser-Moleketi made some progress this year in tackling the historical conundrum of too many public servants with the wrong skills - only 2% of public servants are managers, while 50% fall in the lower-skilled category. In November, the minister led a team to India in a recruitment drive for financial and human resources specialists to second to South African municipalities. But she needs to concentrate on making public service a career of choice for South Africans.

Several skills development initiatives announced by the minister in February are still spluttering along in the planning stages. These include a strategy to intensify management and leadership development programmes to strengthen middle and senior management, and an integrated skills development system across government departments.

To her credit, Fraser-Moleketi has developed a framework for deploying managers to state departments and local councils to counter vertical rigidities in the system.

She is also an advocate of what she calls "e-government" - Internet portals for citizens to interact with the government. A Batho Pele gateway information portal is currently in its final implementation stages, although it has taken a lot longer than planned.

The development and enforcement of an anti-corruption programme for the public service has still not happened, a blot on the minister's record.

Fraser-Moleketi has a difficult and unwieldy portfolio, which she approaches with vigour and common sense. The skills dearth in the civil service must top her agenda next year.

Lindiwe Hendricks
Minister of Minerals and Energy
Grade: C
Hendricks was one of the beneficiaries of the Cabinet reshuffle that followed the firing of Zuma as deputy president, and many felt she had been overlooked in 1999. Her lengthy previous tenure as deputy minister of trade and industry, where she also succeeded Mlambo-Ngcuka, should have prepared her for this tough portfolio. But, in truth, the Minerals and Energy Ministry seems to be sliding down from the high standards of recent years.

This was a year of setbacks and forced revisions. The department had to go back to the drawing board and redraw the Regional Electricity Distributors (Reds) after the spectacular failure in inaugurating the first Red in Cape Town. Intended to incorporate the City of Cape Town and 32 municipalities in the Western and Northern Cape, the distributor went ahead with only the City of Cape Town.

The department has no legal right to compel municipalities to participate in Reds and municipalities cite their constitutional mandate to deliver electricity. The plan now is to have the six metros form stand-alone Reds, with a seventh national Red to accommodate the smaller municipalities.

The debacle exposes the limitations of a style that served Mlambo-Ngcuka well - implicit, perhaps naive, trust that industry will do its duty in good faith, as the mining and oil companies did in negotiating empowerment charters.

Hendricks's department has also made no visible progress in turning the energy White Paper into policy or clarifying the pace and direction of the deregulation of the overtraded fuel retail market.

Two recent events cruelly highlighted the department's lack of control in overseeing the fuel industry. First, at the height of the hearings into the proposed merger between Sasol and Engen's liquid fuel business to form Uhambo Oil, it emerged that the department had accepted assistance from lawyers representing BP, who are opposed to the merger, and Sasol, who desperately need it to go ahead. The department made one of its brightest sparks, Nhlanhla Gumede, take the rap by suspending him. The director general should have been held responsible.

The second incident that illustrates the department's blind faith in industry was the recent fuel shortage. The department blamed the fuel refiners, but the bluster rings hollow. It should have satisfied itself by means of regular updates that the industry was ready to convert to cleaner fuels.

Pallo Jordan
Minister of Arts and Culture
Grade: C- (2004 C)
Look on the website of the Department of Arts and Culture and, under strategic plans, you will notice that the last big document was posted at the beginning of April 2004. While the long-term strategy in the document projects the department's activities until 2007, the service delivery aspect only ran until April this year. This indicates a time vacuum of 10 months in the department's planning.

This may appear of minor importance, but it is a metaphor for a department that is out of control. On the same website, at least three profiles of individuals in the chief directorate are out of date. Who, for example, has replaced the chief director of operations - Jomo Kwadi, who recently left in a huff for De Beers - is unclear. Those in the know say the biggest thorn in Jordan's side remains the department's Director General, Itumeleng Mosala, who apparently only works on Tuesdays and has a penchant for workday golf.

With this in mind, experts ask whether Jordan has failed the department or vice versa. Observers say one cannot stress enough the importance of the minister's senior management team, and that not enough has been done to bring the department in line since the minister's own appointment in May 2004.

The last big policy review culminated in the arts and culture White Paper of 1996. Rumour has it that another policy review is on the cards next year. If that happens with proper consultation, which would include arts industry stakeholders, the minister could win kudos.

The costly national arts and culture imbizo roadshow, that threatened not to go beyond Gauteng, did travel to the Cape this year. But it was unclear what it achieved, as not a single press statement on the imbizo's consultations with artists was released. As we reported in April, there was a lot of complaining at grassroots level about funding and cultural facilities, but very little new ground was covered.

Two continuing crises mar the reputation of a minister who is widely admired for his intellect and charisma. The one is the still unresolved issue of council appointments at the National Arts Council, the major funding body for the arts. It has taken more than a year for Jordan to fire the old council and appoint another. The matter will probably be resolved in 2006.

The other was the funding vacuum that hit the National Film and Video Foundation in July. The rapidly growing film industry was under-budgeted by Parliament, a fact that threatened to undermine relations between the industry and the ministry.

In public, Jordan continues to be a class act - visible, articulate and on-the-spot. But there is disarray backstage.

Ronnie Kasrils
Minister of Intelligence
Grade: A- (pending outcome of tough end-of-year exam) (2004 B)
Kasrils's final mark may be moved up or down depending on the outcome of his most stringent test yet: the fallout from his suspension of National Intelligence Agency (NIA) Director General Billy Masetlha and other top NIA officials.

If it is shown that the minister has acted correctly to protect the agency's integrity, in the face of attempts to abuse it for factional political ends, he will deserve at least an A-. If it emerges that he engaged in partisan conduct, he could lose marks or even fail.

Kasrils insists his action was not political, but until the whole affair is ventilated publicly, his assurances will carry limited weight.

Part of the problem is structural, given that the NIA has a broad political and economic intelligence mandate that provides ample space to delve into the ANC's succession battles as well as the wheeling and dealing around BEE.

In this regard, we welcome Kasrils's decision to initiate a review of intelligence legislation, regulations and operating procedures with a view to ensuring that there are no gaps or ambiguities that could lead to abuse by the intelligence services.

To be welcomed, too, is the minister's emphasis on developing a culture of professionalism and his introduction of Five Principles of Professionalism for Intelligence Officers - which stress the importance of adhering to legality and constitutionality - as well as other steps to ensure greater accountability from those whose actions are cloaked in secrecy.

In particular, the establishment of an archive on intelligence is a vital long-term tool of accountability. In the ministry's own words: "Every action taken by the services will now be preserved and provide a potent guarantee and paper trail against unlawful actions."

It remains to be seen, however, under what terms legal access will be granted to such material, if at all. As the Hefer commission demonstrated, when push comes to shove, the secrecy shutters come down.

But, on the whole, Kasrils must get credit for reining in the organisation, both in terms of its activities and its budget. He has forced his managers to curb spending on personnel, which was crowding out operational budgets. He has cut back several grandiose plans, including a proposal of a tertiary-level intelligence academy and a massive vetting directorate, in favour of more modest, practical proposals.

Yet, intelligence is one security ministry that has grown significantly since 1994. The simple question remains - underlined by the axing of the NIA's top structure - what is it the spies actually do that's worth all that money? Hopefully Kasrils will answer that question in the year ahead.

Mosiuoa Lekota
Minister of Defence
Grade: D+ (2004 B-)
Lekota's unfortunate heart attack earlier this year, from which he recovered, provides a somewhat cruel metaphor for his stewardship of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). His heart is in the right place, but is it up to the task of pushing new blood around a somewhat ageing, somewhat bloated military body and getting it into shape?

"Though sometimes his heart does not seem to be correctly situated: in March, he made himself front-runner- for the most bumptious political statement of the year. Referring to the ongoing controversy around the arms deal, he told Parliament: "It has been an important lesson. Never again will we expose the government to questioning- in the manner it was questioned."

How's that for delivering the real lowdown on accountability?"

And the minister took his own advice too, signing off an R8-billion deal to buy military transport planes with no tender, no transparency and no questions answered.

And, for all Lekota's huffing and puffing, it's that big bad arms deal that is still squeezing the defence budget so much that the SANDF can barely manage the basics.

Combat readiness is low, maintenance of existing systems and infrastructure is backsliding, and key skills shortages remain. According to the Democratic Alliance, these include 180 vacancies in airspace control, 343 in air crew and a massive shortage of 3 277 engineers and technicians.

A so-called exit-mechanism to retrench some of the force's ageing, unhealthy, unfit soldiers is at long last on the cards, but don't hold your breath. And the SANDF is still working on a training programme to give these men civilian skills …

Meanwhile, deployments on peacekeeping missions in Africa maintain the squeeze on operational funding. These worthwhile exercises have been marred by allegations of a rather poor record of sexual misconduct by our boys in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Delays and cost overruns on the arms deal mean that the intense budget pressure is likely to be a feature for some years. Hope your heart's up to it, Terror.

Mosibudi Mangena
Minister of Science and Technology
Grade: A (2004 B-)
Low-key personally, Mangena has shown intellectual verve and political savvy in raising the public profile of science and technology. Mangena's department shed arts and culture in 2003; he was appointed last year. The results have been encouraging.

According to Mangena's Director General, Rob Adam, a key aim of the department is to win greater visibility and support for science and technology as a crucial pillar in development. Mangena managed to get Mbeki to inaugurate the Southern African Large Telescope (Salt) in November. In Sutherland, the telescope is jointly funded by South Africa, the United States, Germany, Poland, Britain and New Zealand, and is the southern hemisphere's largest.

Scientists say Mangena has not put a foot wrong. He has put much energy into inherited backlogs, for example through programmes to draw more black people into the field. He has engaged the Department of Education (where he was formerly a deputy minister) in a move to produce and recruit maths and science teachers.

He is said to be hard-working and conscientious, supportive of scientists and their work, and an excellent ambassador for science and technology. He is steadily addressing the science-related priorities of South Africa's national research and development strategy, published in 2002, and aims to raise finance for more than 100 new university research chairs.

Challenging areas remain, though. The National Research Foundation, which falls under Mangena, has drawn flak for its poor internal management and delivery record. The foundation will present Mangena with another challenge in mid-2006, when the contract of its president, Khotso Mokhele, expires. Mangena's other looming personnel problem will be Adam's departure in March to head up the Nuclear Energy Corporation.

Trevor Manuel
Minister of Finance
Grade: A+ (2004 A-)
Manuel will make his 10th Budget speech in February, but unlike other successful, long-serving finance ministers, he isn't girding his loins to take over the top job.

That is a pity, but it is also an opportunity. Manuel's macroeconomic management has set the stage for drastically improved state performance, but few of his Cabinet colleagues can keep up, which means some of the revenue his work is generating cannot be spent, and there is a spoke in the wheel of the virtuous cycle. Since he is unlikely to be president, however, and get a real grip on the Cabinet, he has political room for boldness.

Growth ticked over 5% in the third quarter of this year, within whispering distance of the 6% threshold that Mlambo-Ngcuka has been charged with reaching.

Much of the credit must go to Manuel - massive growth in state investment within a set of macro-economic parameters that now err on the side of stability, an increasingly confident private sector, and consumers fatter and happier than in previous years are largely the result of his handling of fiscal policy.

And it has happened without the complex, risky kind of state intervention envisaged in the deputy president's accelerated and share growth initiative. Even the employment data are looking better.

One could argue that the tight budgets of the growth, employment and redistribution strategy period are making their presence felt now as constraints on growth. More spending on education, skills development, health and the maintenance of infrastructure might have eased some of the bottlenecks that are increasingly evident in the economy.

But what Manuel is now finding is that his Cabinet colleagues, presented with unprecedented largesse, can't spend it. A deficit of 1% this year is by no means what he originally had in mind.

And since the government can't seem to spend adequately, surely he must consider fresh tax cuts in the new year? Surplus funds have already led the Treasury to approve projects of dubious merit, like the Gautrain, against the better judgement of its own top officials.

Whatever you think of the allocative efficiencies of private capital, it is probably time to give them a chance. Pouring masses of concrete in the name of infrastructure development won't help much in the long term if it results in the vast acreage of wasted resources you can at Coega.

With the big picture looking good, Manuel has entered the lists in other crucial battles, such as chiding the life assurance industry into something like a decent settlement with its put-upon clients, and agitating for changes to the financing system for provinces and municipalities.

A bolder Manuel is beginning to emerge. Let it rip, Trev - you've got nothing to lose.

Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula
Minister of Home Affairs
Grade: D+ (2004 C)
Last year, Mapisa-Nqakula, recently installed in the portfolio, got a satisfactory grade. She was a new minister taking stock of a department historically torn by political infighting and corruption. A year later, she is still running on the spot.

Mapisa-Nqakula's promises for the department into the 21st century have been largely unfulfilled. The implementation of the expensive Home Affairs National Identification System, meant to introduce modern technology to the department and synchronise the computer systems of the national department with satellite offices, has yet to see the light of day - despite a ministerial pledge that a pilot project would be up and running by July.

Parliament's home affairs committee visited all departmental offices during the course of this year and found the majority of them still paper-bound, either because of dysfunctional IT systems or computer illiteracy.

The vacancy rate in the department is conservatively estimated at 20%, a figure that has not improved in five years. In April director general Barry Gilder left the department, the fourth to do so in six years. His turn-around strategy for the department, launched in 2003, appears to have ground to a halt.

Fraud and corruption continue to dog the department. The SABC's Special Assignment highlighted this in an exposé of corrupt officials, while Mapisa-Nqakula inexplicably crushed an internal investigation into the bust of Hollywood actor Wesley Snipes, who had tried to leave South Africa on a fake South African passport. The hostage drama at Home Affairs offices in Johannesburg shed unflattering light on delays in processing identity documents. It was revealed that the department receives 14 000 ID applications, and processes only 6 000, each month.

A directorate launched last year specifically to deal with corruption in the department has yet to be fully implemented.

It was revealed that Home Affairs offices still face huge backlogs in the processing of applications for refugee status - there are currently 85 000 outstanding applications. The minister was criticised for the department's lack of direction in the fight against xenophobia.

Mapisa-Nqakula's major success was in amending the Immigration Act, although many saw the amendments as a quick fix aimed at meeting a deadline set in Mbeki's State of the Nation address last year.

But the Know your Marital Status campaign, launched last year to encourage unmarried women to check their marital status, has been successful - more than 2 000 women have found that they are fraudulently married. The minister has also launched the Lungisa Izincwadi campaign to correct erroneous details in identification documents.

Mapisa-Nqakula also has a good record of responding to parliamentary questions, and has consistently been available to the portfolio committee.

Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri
Minister of Communications
Grade: D (2004 D)
The telecoms and Internet boom South Africa has so keenly awaited has not materialised. Yet again South Africa looks forward to 2006 as the year that may bring liberalisation of the market and deliver real value to consumers.

Matsepe-Casaburri took some important steps in the right direction this year with the promulgation of the Electronic Communication Bill (previously the Convergence Bill), which aims to govern the convergence of all types of communication on one digital network comprising voice, data, Internet, and other information and communications technology platforms.

The awarding of a licence to the Second National Operator (SNO) a few weeks ago, almost four years behind schedule, and the ministerial determination in February allowing municipalities to lease spare capacity in their infrastructure to Internet service providers and value-added network services were important steps in liberalising the market and stimulating competition.

But telecommunications costs remain incredibly high and have a severe effect on the cost of doing business in South Africa, particularly on the call centre industry, identified by the government as a potential growth area. A report released earlier this year proposed 12 steps to bring down communications prices in South Africa, including unbundling of the local loop, regulating interconnection fees and access to undersea cables at cost-based prices, and a review of licence and spectrum fees.

The Independent Communication Authority of South Africa Amendment Bill sparked outrage this year as critics accused Matsepe-Casaburri of seeking to erode the independence of the regulator by removing the power to select Icasa councillors from the parliamentary portfolio committee and placing it in her ministry's hands. One critic complained that, "as usual with the minister", it was one step forward, followed by a giant leap back.

Sydney Mufamadi
Minister of Provincial and Local Government
Grade: E+ (2004 C-)
As the responsible minister since 1999, Mufamadi cannot sidestep the fact that the municipal tier is floundering quite spectacularly and that "developmental local government" remains a distant dream. Riots in non-delivering municipalities across South Africa have underscored the failures.

It is not just that the third tier of government boasts a disproportionate number of corrupt and self-serving officials and elected representatives focused on the spoils of office. At least a third of councils, many newly created, lack the necessary revenue base and either the political clout or administrative systems to recover debt. Accumulated municipal debt topped R40-billion this year, up 4% from the year before.

Mufamadi must be very worried about the local elections, due on March 1. His attempt to eliminate the country's 16 cross-border municipalities has resulted in further violent upheavals. In Merafong and Kokstad, hit by protests over incorporation in North West and the Eastern Cape respectively, residents accuse the minister of imposing solutions and inflexibly ignoring their concerns.

At one stage, the government hinted that political opstokery (incitement) might lie behind the turmoil. But research shows a close link between socio-economic delivery failure and unusually high salaries in the unrest-hit municipalities. Overall, the remuneration of councillors and officials outstrips expenditure on services by nearly R10-billion - 10% of the total municipal budget.

While Mufamadi is legally entitled to cap municipal managers' salaries in terms of the Municipal Systems Act, he has been reluctant to do so for fear of interfering with this constitutionally independent tier of the government.

The minister has numerous initiatives to his credit. He is at the forefront of Project Consolidate, designed to bring together private and public business leaders and the national government in support of about 130 struggling municipalities. He has spearheaded the idea of community development workers to short-circuit local and provincial government by reporting delivery backlogs directly to the national government. But turf wars are brewing between the workers, councillors and ward committee members.

Mufamadi is also responsible for streamlining intergovernmental relations. The Integrated Government Framework Relations Bill, aimed at improving coordination of service provision between the three tiers of government, has been implemented in eight provinces. But attempts to make the various bits of the government pull in the same direction by aligning provincial growth and development strategies, integrated municipal development plans and the national spatial development plans, have been slow out of the starting blocks.

The key issue remains that of skills. The minister needs to build a professional non-partisan core of municipal employees to take responsibility for local services.

Charles Nqakula
Minister of Safety and Security
Grade: F (2004 E)
Crime and security issues seem to have a permanent place on the South African dinner-table agenda. If men are not attacking young children, heavily armed robbers are staging audacious heists at malls or on the roads.

Against this background, Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula's almost invisible approach to citizens' daily worries does him no favours. As we said last year, he cannot continue running the ministry as though it were an inconsequential bureaucracy.

In fairness, his task is unenviable. His ministry has to deliver law and order in a context of a poorly educated populace, massive inequalities and poor infrastructure. He does not control the process that determines the police budget, and thus cannot deal properly with poor salaries and the South African Police Service's (SAPS) lack of crime-fighting equipment, including patrol cars and bulletproof vests.

But his reticence - in contrast with the charisma and extroversion of his predecessor, Steve Tshwete - means that he punches below his weight in the Cabinet. Neither does he seem to be interested in sharing his dilemmas with South Africans. The Gauteng minister of safety and community liaison, Firoz Cachalia, has a higher and more dynamic profile.

Nqakula also appears to have an arm's-length relationship with his Director General, National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. Their frosty relationship continues to deprive a society in need of reassurance that the two men principally tasked with their safety speak with one voice.

One of their few agreements seems to be over the Scorpions. As the Khampepe inquiry made clear, they both believe the elite unit should be incorporated in the SAPS.

The relationship between the two brings us, ironically, to what may have been Nqakula's saving grace in a difficult year.

Contrary to the war talk coming from Selebi's office that the gun-licence laws would not be revisited, it has since been established that Nqakula did meet with the gun lobby with the aim of finding ways of tackling the administrative backlog in the processing of licences.

Naledi Pandor
Minister of Education
Grade: D (2004 C+)
Few events epitomise Pandor's tenure better than the "national consultative conference" she convened in Durban this year. For three days in May, delegates from a huge range of educational organisations wandered in bewildered fashion from session to session, asking each other during tea breaks what they were expected to do there and what the conference was meant to achieve.

One clue was in the conference's subtitle: "Deepening the education policy dialogue". Another was in the ubiquitous appearance of the word "consensus" in the reams of documents the Department of Education produced before, during and after the conference. And most telling of all was the mysterious way Pandor produced a "conference declaration" in the final session, read it out to a depleted auditorium, and announced that as there were no objections the declaration was formally adopted.

The declaration has no formal policy status and merely repeated what "education policy dialogues" have said for decades. Was it worth the R2-million tab for delegates' accommodation and travel?

Our report last year commended Pandor for consulting beyond the closed inner circle of bureaucrats on whom her predecessor, Kader Asmal, largely relied. But we also warned that in her second year she would need to move beyond consultation towards concrete outcomes and actions. Of these there have been almost none.

Where Asmal showed a cavalier disregard for ruffled feathers in ramming through policies - however problematic they turned out to be - Pandor seems over-anxious to avoid conflict and claim "consensus" where none exists. The result has been a year of fine speeches - and little concrete progress in tackling the vast backlogs in schooling quality, university access, adult basic education, and training and early childhood development.

Despite Pandor's recent reference in the National Council of Provinces to "pessimistic journalists who revel in predicting failure", let us repeat: the plan to introduce "no fee" schools next year will fail for a variety of reasons, including its complexity. It is far more tangled than even the fee-exemption policy which the department eventually conceded was not working. Why can Pandor not grasp the nettle and introduce free basic education for all? She would have the backing not only of the Constitution but of every major teacher union as well. The doors of learning still firmly shut against many of poor children would open.

That's assuming there are enough teachers to teach them: the year ended with educationists predicting dire shortages over the next five to 10 years. The department typically denied there would be any particular problem - qualified teachers who had left the profession would somehow be re-recruited.

When the school system is ailing, the effects are felt throughout the entire education terrain - most obviously on universities, but also early childhood development, further education and training colleges, and adult basic education and training.

And this is why the lack of a firm steering vision from the centre - the ministry - is causing damage that may last for decades. Time to take control and kick butt, minister - starting with your own bureaucrats.

Jeff Radebe
Minister of Transport
Grade: B (2004 C)
Radebe can be in no doubt that South Africa's public transport system needs a plan. In the past few months, the burning of metro trains, the Gautrain debate and continuing taxi violence have thrown the inadequacies of the system into harsh relief. Critics say he talks a lot, but is doing little.

The end of year brought controversy - over the Gautrain - and some relief for Radebe with the announcement of a R25-billion injection into Metrorail's ageing infrastructure. Many officials in his own department were unhappy that he seemed to lack political clout on the Gautrain issue and did not oppose the project more vocally. But the R5-billion a year he won for Metrorail has gone some way to restoring his credibility.

With the Cabinet's approval of Gautrain, Radebe will have to ensure his suggestion of integrating the R20-billion project with other commuter transport systems, such as Metrorail and the bus network, is taken seriously.

Commuter transport is not in a healthy state. Many buses have not received new permits since 1994. Stakeholders are calling for the minister to implement the long-awaited Transport Planning Authority to streamline public transport.

Radebe is given some credit for restarting the taxi recapitalisation programme, aimed at renewing the national fleet, but visible reform still seems a long way off. The pit stops for the different phases keep shifting, and when he promised that the scrapping of old taxis would be introduced earlier this year, there were wry smiles - which turned out to be justified. By end-2005, the programme has not progressed beyond speeches.

The road network and its R65-billion maintenance backlog also remain a huge challenge.

One of Radebe's biggest problems remains an inadequate budget, R7,6-billion, most of which goes towards subsidising transport - excluding taxis. Critics say a multi-ticketing system is needed, but the minister simply does not have the budget to implement such a system.

Though the taxi recapitalisation programme received R885-million for the next three years, it is unclear whether the additional funding will inject momentum into the project.

On road safety, Radebe has a long way to go. The stalling of the taxi recap programme has been a big setback for safer roads. The highly problematic Road Accident Fund, which has been plagued by corruption estimated to cost the country R500-million a year, was redesigned and new legislation drafted.

But the new regime is not seen as a significant improvement, as it limits victims' right to claim after an accident. Critics have also called for the government to purge the fund of the many parasitic lawyers who monopolise it. The fund is technically insolvent, and too much money is spent on litigation, while not enough gets through to victims. But Radebe is seen to have taken a positive step by giving its chief executive, Humphrey Kgomongwe, the boot.

Lindiwe Sisulu
Minister of Housing
Grade: A (2004 A)
Good ideas do not necessarily translate into reality, however energetic the minister may be.

Sisulu's vigorous, hands-on style was illustrated by the tracksuit she donned to help build houses in Masiphumelele, near Cape Town. But she is still chasing the R42-billion the banks promised for low-cost housing two years after the financial charter was agreed, as the banks continue to hang tough for the government's risk guarantees.

This is her biggest test: the money could begin to shift apartheid urban planning that banned poor, mainly black, communities to the outskirts of the cities where transport is costly and jobs rare. The aim is cheap mortgage bonds and an end to red-lining.

Despite the construction of 1,6-million houses in a decade, the housing backlog still stands at 2,4-million.

Six months after Sisulu's move from the intelligence portfolio came the release of the Comprehensive Sustainable Human Settlement Plan. This emphasises social housing, with low-cost units for rent or purchase in developments within city limits, featuring commercial opportunities. The owner contribution of R2 479 was scrapped for those earning less than R1 500 a month, rural residents, the elderly, disabled and indigent. Also, a drive to issue title deeds with all houses has taken off.

Slum eradication by 2014 is still on the table, but the government's lead venture, the N2 Gateway Project, illustrates how hard it will be to meet the deadline. Problems with the Gateway include developers' unhappiness over cash flows, political head-knocking between officials of all three spheres of the government and concerns over how to allocate the units.

The prospect of poorer families in wealthy suburbs - and particularly the minister's proposal that 30% of all developments should be reserved for low-cost homes - has unsettled the golfing classes.

Sisulu's department has been run by an acting director general for a year, after the departure of the long-standing housing director general Mpumi Nxumalo and later Nxumalo's replacement in an acting capacity, Ahmedi Vawda. Low morale is said to have improved, but the lack of a permanent head of department is clearly not ideal.

Zola Skweyiya
Minister of Social Development
Grade: C (2004 B)
Skweyiya has kept a relatively low media profile this year, owing in part to poor health. But his department has notched up some achievements. The anti-fraud campaign paid dividends, with 43 000 civil servants being identified as beneficiaries of social grants, most of them illegal. It must now act - the welfare department, more than any other, cannot be seen to condone theft from the poor.

The idea of offering indemnity to citizens illegally receiving social grants was a masterstroke. More than 80 000 people have come forward to fess up this year, saving the government about R500 000 in the medium-term expenditure framework period. But officials concede that many more remain illegally in the system. Catching welfare cheats is not enough - safeguards are needed to prevent malfeasance on such a massive scale. South Africa is still waiting for the social security agency Skweyiya says is a step in that direction.

The agency is also meant to ensure that those entitled to social security grants get them, and get them on time. This year, the CEO and an advisory panel were appointed and head offices set up. Provincial managers are about to be installed.

The department says the child support grant has reached six million children. But it is facing a considerable challenge in rural provinces such as the Eastern Cape, Free State and North West, where the uptake is very low. The department has faced difficulty in trying to help Aids orphans, where red tape means the process to register children for foster care grants is incredibly slow. So far, 300 000 children are accessing the foster care grants, but welfare workers believe that is only a proportion of a bigger pool of children in need.

The programme to eliminate the phenomenon of child-headed households through arranging foster caring requires lengthy assessments by social workers and magistrates before foster parents are registered. Skweyiya therefore has to find a way to make the system work as Aids begins to take a greater toll and more children find themselves without parents.

Skweyiya is a compassionate man and has intervened on several occasions this year on behalf of poor South Africans. He stepped in to halt the food parcel scheme when it became apparent that the companies distributing the packages were benefiting more than the recipients.

But there is still a question mark over his wife's acceptance of a R65 000 loan from Sandi Majali, who is involved in companies that distribute social grants. Majali has not denied paying for renovations to Skweyiya's house in Pretoria after receiving a R15-million advance from oil parastatal PetroSA in the Oilgate scandal.

Buyelwa Sonjica
Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry
Grade: D (2004 C-)
Sonjica could more appropriately be called a minister without portfolio. "We no longer directly provide taps and toilets or grow trees," she said in her budget vote speech in May, these functions now being provided by municipalities, private entities and parastatals.

Her role is "to lead these sectors … to monitor progress in our strategic areas of delivery so that we can intervene quickly when things go off track".

Things went badly off track in September during a typhoid outbreak in Delmas, blamed on groundwater pollution resulting from a lack of sanitation services. At least five people died of typhoid and close to 5 000 fell ill.

A recent national survey by the Water Research Commission found stoppages and clogging of municipal sewers in South Africa are about 10 times more frequent than the international average. More worrying, about 16-million people still live without running water and 231 000 households across the country use the bucket system for toilets.

Water provision and reallocation- are proceeding slowly. At least 3,5-million people have no access to safe water, and about 60% of local government is not adhering to water quality requirements. The minister estimates it will take seven years to reallocate water resources more equitably.

Setting up water catchment management authorities in the 19 identified areas is proceeding slowly, with, at most, two established. The redistribution of state-owned commercial forests to broad-based black economic empowerment interests took a knock when Komatiland Forests stopped supplying private timber mills in Mpumalanga, threatening at least 2 500 jobs.

Sonjica cannot be blamed for the extra pressures of drought, forest fires and climate change. The changes in her portfolio are constitutional mandates and she has to share her responsibilities with other portfolios. Her budgets are shrinking - the water services budget, for instance, will fall to around R400-million in 2007/08, from a high of R2 391-million in 2003/04.

She sees her role as focusing on a national water resource strategy, monitoring and regulation. By her own admission, she is struggling to get this to fit in with other levels of government, and to build up capacity. Can South Africa afford to wait?

Makhenkesi Stofile
Minister of Sport and Recreation
Grade: A (2004 B+)
Overseeing sport in South Africa is a double-edged sword. On the upside, it is a portfolio with considerable perks and few life-threatening decisions to make. And, with the president's palpable lack of interest, decisions are unlikely to earn the incumbent too many withering looks at Cabinet meetings.

The downside is that Stofile has to deal with rugby - it's difficult to think of another Cabinet minister who has regularly and publicly met so many unsavoury characters. To add to his problems, his brother, Mike, is one of those rugby officials.

While Jake White's Springbok team has been winning friends and breaking larynxes around the world, the officials of the South African Rugby Union (Saru) have been indulging in their favourite sport - infighting.

After a half-hearted attempt to sort out the mess, Stofile wisely left them to it. In his second year in the post, he has realised that, like the Blue Bulls' appearance in the Currie Cup final, the Saru bunfight is an annual affair.

His backing of the Eastern Cape in the race for the fifth Super 14 franchise was unsurprising - if unpopular - as he had been premier of the province. But saying South Africa should back New Zealand's bid for the 2011 World Cup (after our own bid fell by the wayside) because of that country's help during the struggle, was a deliberate knock-on. Note to the ministry: Japan (the only other candidate) was enforcing sanctions against South Africa when the All Blacks were still happily playing the Boks.

The minister has had a much more successful and productive year on other fronts. He has overseen the amalgamation of the Sports Commission and Nocsa into the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee - a process started late last year - eliminating the confusion that having two such bodies created, and has set about trying to get more funding for school sport. In a joint effort with the education department, he is attempting to get the piffling 35c spent on each pupil trebled.

This sensible but unsung focus on the grassroots, supporting initiatives that may not pay off for a decade or more, show Stofile is taking the long-term view, and is the main reason for his improved mark this year. Without rugby, he might even have got to the head of the class.

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang
Minister of Health
Grade: F (2004 C+ for general health, F- for HIV/Aids)
Look on her works, ye mighty (and more especially ye powerless), and despair. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has led the Department of Health further into the mire this year, with tentative signs of a resurgence in the moribund department obscured by highly public bad news.

Despite taking credit for pushing through the drafting of the Comprehensive Plan for the Management, Care and Treatment of HIV/Aids, the minister appears unenthusiastic about presiding over one of the world's largest anti-retroviral (ARV) therapy programmes. Her ministry says she was forced into drug provision when "her rivals insisted on the immediate implementation of anti-retroviral treatment".

Potential side effects of anti-retrovirals deeply worry Tshabalala-Msimang, who invited experts to lecture the National Health Council on their dangers and ineffectiveness. She has also said she is unhappy about the number of people on ARVs because she doesn't know the level of toxicity. Doctors involved in the roll-out are concerned about lack of monitoring and evaluation, but, unlike the minister, don't have the power to monitor the whole programme.

The monitoring vacuum is one example of the gaps in the department. Many national and provincial posts are vacant, and too often it is important technical, rather than administrative, positions that go unfilled.

The department waits until crisis- erupts: whether it be typhoid in Delmas, 22 babies dying of hospital--acquired infections at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial hospital, lack of ARV stocks, escalating private healthcare costs or legislative foul-ups. It then hits the "blame-someone-else-and-panic" button.

Despite her department's incapacity, the minister seems willing to take on new responsibilities. Well-sourced rumours say the independence of the Medicines Control Council is under debate and that it may be pulled into the department.

The minister has remained a divisive rather than a unifying figure. Her private meetings with the controversial and litigious vitamin dealer Matthias Rath have reinforced the impression that she believes nutritional supplements are a substitute rather than a supplement for ARVs.

Eleven years into democracy, South Africa still has no comprehensive human resources plan for the health sector. Luring medical professionals from Tunisia and Russia and appealing to the patriotism of South Africans working abroad to come home are not sustainable solutions. The government hospitals are under strain, while private hospitals are underused. The Health Charter is intended to codify the responsibilities of stakeholders and align the public and private sectors to deliver healthcare as effectively as possibly. Yet the charter, a key commitment of 2004, remains unfinished.

The National Health Act of 2003 was partly implemented this year to replace apartheid-era legislation. But strategic parts of the Act were not brought into force because the department had not fully thought through crucial issues, such as certificates of need for doctors and medical facilities. The Constitutional Court finally gave a conditional nod to that veteran of many court battles, the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act of 1997. But the go-ahead came only after months of confusion over pharmacy fees.

There has been some good news, such as the development of the Risk Equalisation Fund, which aims to help vulnerable people access medical schemes. Also started this year was the Low Income Medical Scheme process, which should help several million poor people get medical scheme cover for out-of-pocket costs.
Marthinus van Schalkwyk
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism
Grade: B (2004 B-)
Van Schalkwyk has had a busy, productive year. His main achievements include proclaiming two new national parks, banning asbestos and gazetting the Air Quality Act.

He has a knack for drawing in interest groups to help him deal with the bigger challenges in his portfolio, and for listening to them. Examples include the National Climate Change Conference, which brought together eight government ministries in October, and the panel of experts on hunting, which made some enlightened and broad-ranging recommendations to reform the industry.

Not much has been heard from the National Environmental Advisory Forum, an intermediary between civil society and government set up by the minister in February.

The Marine and Coastal Management division has settled down since being restructured in April, though transformation of fishing rights is proving tricky. The country's first National Spatial Biodiversity Assessment identified which areas need the most protection, including 12% of marine bio-zones.

A process of identifying and cleaning up pollution hot spots started in September, with the launch of the Air Quality Act. But it will take at least two years to get a national framework in place to manage and enforce air quality.

Van Schalkwyk is playing an active role in talks on climate change, but interventions are few. As Democratic Alliance spokesperson Gareth Morgan pointed out in a parliamentary address in June, "passing laws is the easy part, implementing them is far more difficult".

The department is investing R193-million in transfrontier conservation initiatives this year and is spending more than R296-million on poverty relief projects that marry job creation and tourism infrastructure development.

Transfrontier development is a major push in anticipation of the 2010 Football World Cup, and Van Schalkwyk has spent a fair time negotiating with Southern African Development Community counterparts on this. He aims to grow tourism in South Africa by between 1,8% and 2,1% this year.

Major challenges looming in the near future include decisions on how to regulate the hunting industry and whether to cull elephants. Controversy around the proposed Wild Coast toll road and pebble bed modular reactors has resurfaced, and in both instances, the department has insisted on new environmental impact assessments. Whichever way the process goes, Van Schalkwyk is likely to come in for criticism.

AWOL
Brigitte Mabandla
Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development
When the Mail & Guardian last assessed Mabandla, we condoned her performance on the grounds that she had been in the job for just more than six months. Her tenure is now 18 months old, sufficient time to stamp her authority on her portfolio. She still seems to be groping forward, without much authority or confidence.

Amid an unprecedented row over alleged racism in the Cape legal profession, she failed to provide political or moral leadership, leaving Chief Justice Pius Langa to try to sort out the mess. Tensions between black and white legal practitioners continue to simmer.

While the Scorpions might have expected support from the ministry under which they currently fall, Mabandla told the Khampepe commission she favoured their incorporation into the police. She reasoned that the unit had reached their sell-by date because "there had been a real decline in the levels of some of the serious crimes that have caused public fear and anxiety".

The department also suffered the embarrassment of having to placate magistrates intent on striking because the department had broken its promise of car allowances as a way of improving their salary packages. Only in December did they finally receive what they had been offered.

A further disappointment was Mabandla's failure to kick-start the long-stalled Sexual Offences Bill.

Mabandla's most crucial test will be potentially explosive legislation regulating the judiciary, essentially put together by her deputy, Johnny de Lange. Two Bills have been approved by the Cabinet, but have not yet been tabled and their contents are still unknown.

The judges objected strongly to some of the original legislative proposals, arguing that they made executive inroads into the independence of the judiciary.

AWOL
Membathisi Mdladlana
Minister of Labour
It has not been a particularly good year for Mdladlana, who has either been invisible or mired in controversy.

He is a rather bumptious person, given to shooting his mouth off. His most visible intervention was as head of South Africa's observer mission to Zimbabwe, when he declared the election free and fair before it took place. Questioned on this pronouncement by journalists, he responded: "I was born in a small town. There we only know the customs of the Dlaminis and cannot speak about the customs of the Radebes."

The Labour Department came under criticism in April for spending more than R44-million on a skills development conference when, critics insisted, R1-million would have been excessive. Instead of taking responsibility, the minister suspended his deputy director general, Adrian Bird, for misusing government funds.

Through skills development, Mdladlana's department is pivotal to the government's target of halving poverty by 2014.

Mdladlana boasts that the target of 80 000 people in learnerships over the past five years has been exceeded, but statistics shows that only a tiny proportion have successfully completed the programme. The sector education and training authorities (Setas) failed to spend more than R2-billion earmarked for skills development last year.

Mdladlana has also not filled long-standing vacancies in his own department. According to the 2004 auditor general's report, vacancies in excess of 20% persist in many areas, particularly statistics and programme management.

The high vacancy rate is underscored by the department's extensive reliance on outside experts - the minister recently lambasted his officials for spending millions on consultants.

AWOL
Mandisi Mpahlwa
Minister of Trade and Industry
Mpahlwa kept a low profile when he was deputy finance minister, but he has been practically invisible as Minister of Trade and Industry.

The national Treasury has been quietly bumped from its position at the centre of the debate, and industrial policy has elbowed its way onto the stage, trailing footnotes to development economists like Dani Rodrick.

With Alan Hirsch, a former departmental mandarin, running the economic policy unit in the presidency, perhaps it is not surprising that the things Mpahlwa's department is supposed to manage - such as industrial support schemes and efforts to keep the prices of key input low - are now being touted as the answer to higher growth rates.

So why isn't Mpahlwa evident in the vanguard?

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has been given custodianship of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (Asgi, perhaps the most infelicitous acronym in the government's alphabet soup) for what seem largely to be political reasons.

And one of Mpahlwa's two deputies, Rob Davies, is charged with leading the industrial policy side of the plan. He also seems to be doing most of the talking on trade issues.

Has that freed up Mpahlwa to focus on development finance institutions - an area where he has real expertise? Apparently not. While the Industrial Development Corporation ticks along, the National Empowerment Fund, Apex Fund and Khula seem stuck in a period of reorganisation and consolidation.

Has he instead focused on trade negotiations? If so, it isn't clear. This is an area in which South Africa, under that canniest of negotiators, Alec Erwin, had real prestige. As the faltering Doha development round stumbled on in Hong Kong, developing-world leadership came from India, Brazil and China.

Mpahlwa's profile suffers in part because he has one of the least effective communications departments in the Cabinet, but also because his department is under-resourced and not fully recovered from the legacy of its former director general, Alistair Ruiters. Perhaps he has spent the year getting his ducks in a row. We hope so, because next year a good deal more will be expected of him.

Away on leave
Stella Sigcau
Minister of Public Works
B+ (for her team)
Visibly weakened with a heart ailment, Sigcau spent a large proportion of the year on sick leave. When she made public appearances, it was to cajole business into assisting with the public works programme; and she spent a lot of time in the places she loves best - the rural backwaters of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

The rest of the Public Works department then deserves credit for a year well-spent. For starters, the department received its first ever unqualified audit.

Sigcau's team also completed the audit of the state's huge property portfolio and put a figure to the maintenance backlog. The reason that police stations, Home Affairs and our courts are in such a shoddy state is because of this backlog. It will cost R12,5-billion to pull things straight and next year, Sigcau will request R2,5-billion a year from her finance counterpart, Manuel.

Team "Stella" also claims the expanded public works programme is on track to meet its target of creating a million job opportunities between 2004 and 2009. In the first quarter of this year, 60 000 opportunities were created, with 174 000 in 2004.

But it's worth remembering that an EPWP "job opportunity" lasts an average of four months and pays about R600 a month. Does it really make a dent in unemployment, we have to ask ourselves? What else has Public Works done? It is far ahead of other departments in weeding out front companies who compete for government work. The Scorpions are probing 63 companies, which a Public Works probe found had created fronts to qualify for black economic empowerment (BEE) work. The department's also spearheaded BEE charters in property and construction; Sigcau pushes and supports women-owned companies in the sector.

But the fight between public works and education about who is responsible for more efficient school-building continues.

PARTY LEADERS
Mangosuthu Buthelezi
President of the Inkatha Freedom Party
Grade: F
After more than 50 years in politics, it is time for Buthelezi to ride into the sunset.

He is an astute politician, but his attempts to cling on to power are increasingly undermining his party. For the sake of both the IFP - the party he started more than 30 years ago - and opposition politics, Buthelezi should make way for young blood and fresh ideas.

Party chairperson and revisionist Ziba Jiyane attempted to do this but was squeezed out of the party by Buthelezi, who on several occasions accused him of being "deeply manipulative" and planning to take the IFP into the ANC fold. The election of Zanele Magwaza, the mayor of the Zululand district municipality and a slavish Buthelezi loyalist, as the IFP's new national chairperson has pushed the party further into a cul de sac of ethnic chauvinism and the politics of patronage.

Buthelezi has surrounded himself with yea-sayers, instead of infusing the party with a culture of debate and modernism and redrafting the IFP's outdated policies to suit the times.

The party, which boasted a million members in the mid-1980s, is now a flicker of its former self and no longer a serious contender for power, even in KwaZulu-Natal. Since 1994, the IFP has shed 50% of its voter support and has experienced an almost total rejection by voters in eight of the nine provinces. Over the same period, it lost 40% of its Zulu support.

Buthelezi's insistence that he is "revising" the party is as fraudulent as his promises that he has built a party that "cares". Most of the IFP-run municipalities are managed like fiefdoms with scant regard for service delivery.

With limited political leverage in KwaZulu-Natal legislature and local government, the IFP was mauled in the floor-crossing feeding frenzy. It lost five of its national MPs and three of its provincial legislature members.

The IFP youth brigade leadership, with the exception of brigade chairperson and Buthelezi loyalist Thulasizwe Buthelezi, left the party this year.

Buthelezi has also shown scant leadership in the squabble between the IFP and the ANC over the adoption of a constitution for KwaZulu-Natal, which has regressed into an ethnic slanging match.

PARTY LEADERS
Patricia de Lille
Independent Democrats leader
Grade: D
Once touted as a brave new force in non-racial opposition politics, Patricia de Lille is looking increasingly vulnerable.

Her struggle with the ID's ex-Western Cape leader Max Lennit did not go her way: during this year's floor-crossing, he was able to take his provincial legislature seat to the Democratic Alliance. The DA, concerned about potential ID inroads in its white and coloured voter base, particularly in the Western Cape, gloated.

Also lost to the party were two of the ID's seven MPs. In the Western Cape legislature, De Lille's sister, Sarah Paulse, is the sole ID representative left following September's defection period. It also lost its only seat in the National Council of Provinces. All round, a blood-letting!

Two years after its formation during the 2003 defection period, when De Lille left the Pan-Africanist Congress, the ID been hit by ego clashes, organisational conflict and internal battles over policy direction. Having criticised the DA for knee-jerk opposition to the government, it now appears uncertain about what kind of opposition to offer. Once a fierce critic of the African National Congress, De Lille has become much less visible.

De Lille has been warned about taking bad advice from those she keeps close to her. In the cases of both Lennit Max, the ex-policeman she had hoped to turn into an effective politician, and Themba Sono, the former Gauteng ID leader, she chose to ignore the cautions.

But no one can accuse her of lacking determination. The ID plans to field local government election candidates in all six metropolitan areas and in towns across all nine provinces. It has vowed to go it alone: there will not be alliances or coalitions.

The elections will be a crucial test of whether the ID has a real future or whether, like the United Democratic Movement, it is a flash in the pan. Its biggest draw card remains De Lille herself.

PARTY LEADERS
Tony Leon
Democratic Alliance leader
Grade: C
To Leon's credit, his party has fulfilled its opposition role in Parliament, being vocal on every issue despite the ruling party trying hard to pretend it does not exist. The Oilgate scandal was an example of an issue which the ANC hoped would quietly disappear, but which was kept alive by the DA and other opposition parties, together with the media.

And despite the emergence of the Independent Democrats and other parties pitching for the white, coloured and Indian vote, Leon has largely held the DA's traditional support base. But the fact remains that it is a 13% political party that appears to have hit its ceiling.

This year it suffered an image-tarnishing cross-over of senior black MPs to the ANC. The DA has been content to portray the defectors as ambitious careerists solely concerned with using the ANC to climb the greasy pole. But there seems to have been little attempt to look inwards and acknowledge that the party's culture is not welcoming to black recruits.

To all appearances, Leon continues to enjoy the full backing of his party. But DA supporters who understand that minority-based politics is a cul de sac are beginning to look at national MP and Cape Town mayor candidate Helen Zille as a potential leader.

The ANC appears more vulnerable than ever at local level, but it is far from clear that the DA will be able to exploit this in the local government elections. If it fails significantly to improve its fortunes, Leon should ask himself whether it is time to let go of the reins.

With acknowledgements to the Mail & Guardian.