GNU cabinet a bloated beast or herald of change?:
The announcement of the new cabinet must be considered a significant disappointment by many opposition party supporters. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet has increased from 30 to 32 ministers, and the number of deputy ministers has risen to 43. It is clear that the cabinet’s expansion was a negotiating tactic aimed at keeping parties happy, but it failed to prioritise the voting citizen.
Historically, opposition parties have called for a decrease in the size of the cabinet. For instance, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has advocated for the removal of cadre deployment, a practice the ANC has used to appoint officials of their choosing. It would have been expected that during the government of national unity (GNU) negotiations, there would have been a push for a reduction in the cabinet size and a restructuring of its functions. Instead, we have seen an increase in cabinet positions, which appear to be politically motivated rather than aimed at improving overall government administration.
DA federal council chair Helen Zille recently discussed the issue on Radio 702, stating that the party should not be blamed for the “bloated cabinet”. She said the DA made concessions regarding cabinet positions under the assumption that it would be reduced in size. Zille also said she hoped that the new ministers would not take full advantage of the Ministerial Handbook benefits, and rather pay for electricity and water and not maintain two residences.
But this does not absolve the DA, because there was a reluctance to abandon key demands during negotiations, including their manifesto’s call to reduce government spending on the cabinet. The ministerial mansions are worth a collective R967 million, and R2 billion has been spent on ministerial “support staff”. This money could have been better invested in initiatives that benefit the people of South Africa.
The increase in the size of the cabinet is likely to lead to a larger ministerial budget to support the new “bloated” cabinet, as it has been termed in the media. Given the government’s long history of financial mismanagement, it is likely that this situation will only worsen. If the GNU’s many politicians are more interested in representation and financial benefits than improving overall government efficiency it raises concerns about whom the unity government is serving.
Many political parties cite unemployment, crime and load-shedding as South Africa’s most pressing issues. It would have been preferable for the GNU to reduce the cabinet size and reallocate that spending to address these problems more effectively. Additionally, a smaller, more streamlined cabinet would improve decision-making and execution.
South Africa is already one of the most unequal societies in the world. There is a growing fear that politicians may be perceived as indifferent to the general population’s struggles and may continue to enjoy a lifestyle disconnected from the reality faced by many South Africans.
With some politicians living in mansions estimated to be worth R10 million, there is concern that financial perks may attract individuals who are not genuinely interested in politics but rather in exploiting the system.
But, with various political parties holding positions in the cabinet and serving as deputy ministers in many key portfolios, there is a possibility for a change in political culture. This could lead to a more service-oriented approach to governance and a potential shift away from the empty promises South Africans have heard for years.
As the initial euphoria of the GNU settles, much as it did during Ramaphosa’s first term, we will see whether there is anything to be hopeful about.
Khumo Kumalo is the founder of the website Misunderstood, which unpacks social, identity and economic issues in South Africa, and a student at Morehouse College, studying political science. He is also a Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans 2024 winner.
Drought leaves Zimbabwe’s Kapotesa dam dry, villagers struggle for survival:
A bed of sand and a patch of mud is all that remains of Kapotesa dam, which once provided the water vital for crops and livestock in this remote part of Zimbabwe.
Nearby, farmer Georgina Kwengwere walks among corn stalks desiccated by the drought that is ravaging her country and leaving millions of people in need of food aid.
“I did not harvest anything after all my effort and using all our savings to buy seeds,” the 54-year-old said, shaking her head despondently. “Not even a single cob.”
The Kapotesa dam dried up in May, Kwengwere said. “Only God knows how we are going to survive until the next harvest next year,” she said.
When the rains are good, water from the dam in the northeastern Mudzi district allows Kwengwere and her husband to grow vegetables to feed themselves and their six children. There is even a surplus to sell for cash to buy livestock and pay school fees.
Now Kwengwere has to join other villagers on a five-kilometre daily walk to a business centre in the small town of Kotwa to look for odd jobs to be able to buy food.
On a good day she will make about three US dollars; on a bad day, she makes the long walk back home to her village of Mafuta empty-handed.
Like most villagers in the district of around 164,000 people, her family has cut back meals to just two a day.
“Most of us have no food in our homes,” said Takesure Chimbu, 58, also from Mafuta. “Without water, everything is down,” he told AFP.
Cases of malnutrition have jumped by around 20 percent in Mudzi in the past three months, district medical officer Kudzai Madamombe said.
“Food is quite expensive in the district especially due to the fact that we are drought-prone,” he said, calling for government assistance.
Nutritional porridge
Faced with this spike in malnutrition, health experts in Mudzi have come up with a nutritional porridge called maworesa, which means “the very best” in the local Shona language.
It is made from cheap, locally sourced ingredients such as eggs, sugar beans and baobab fruit that are contributed by the villagers.
The porridge was concocted to cover basic nutritional needs by including carbohydrates, protein, and fruits and vegetables, Madamombe said.
“This has greatly helped in curbing malnutrition using as little money as possible while making sure that every child in every family gets at least four basic food groups at least once a week,” he said.
Zimbabwe and neighbouring Malawi and Zambia are among the countries in southern Africa most affected by malnutrition after a severe drought which experts say was worsened by the El Nino phenomenon.
In May, President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared a state of disaster, saying Zimbabwe needed at least two billion dollars to respond to the drought.
At least 7.6 million people, almost half of the population, are in need of aid, the UN said in May. Children aged under five and pregnant and lactating women are most affected.
“Harvests have not been what they should be,” UNICEF Zimbabwe chief communications officer Yves Willemot told AFP. “Most people are living in a pretty dire situation with lack of access to water and food.”
In early June, the UN launched a $ 429 million drought appeal for Zimbabwe.
“Until now, except for internal resources and resources from the UN safe, we have not received any contributions yet,” Willemot said.
© Agence France-Presse
The meaning of freedom and life in the age of false idols:
Why is there life rather than nothing? This is one of the startlingly odd questions we encountered in philosophy 101. Intimidatingly outlandish as it seemed, we tentatively embraced it as part of the philosophical terrain we had signed up for.
So, with fortitude we attempted to ponder its answer. But no matter how hard we tried, none of us could bend our minds to imagine a nothing. Nonetheless, we were not bothered by our failure to answer a question we thought we would never need to ask in “real” life.
But long after graduating from the philosophy department at the University of Cape Town, that question came to my mind again. At first it was a matter of a curious mind about the purpose and meaning of my life. I needed a philosophical and scientific reason for being alive — in addition to religious explanations.
I first explored Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. But it disappointingly offered me causes, not reasons. And philosophical existentialism told me to make my own meaning. But I needed meaning in context, politically and socially.
Then I read Aristotle’s claim that “man is by nature a political animal”. Aristotle imputed to me the nature of a political animal. That is the context I needed to discover the meaning of my life. And it is in this political context that the meaning of my life makes sense of my purpose in the cause for a better world.
Henceforth, to vote for a government was an extension and expression of my meaning and purpose. Holding back the duty to elect a government would have been the denial of my meaning and purpose. I would be lost without a cause.
But I do not recall voting for false idols. My philosophy 101 question helped me to break the spell. So I asked, “Why is there freedom rather than tyranny?” The answer to this profound question is in the story of a naive boy who nonetheless voted in 1994. Standing in the queue to the ballot paper that Autumn morning, his young mind was preoccupied by what, not who, he was about to vote for.
He was born and bred on a white-owned farm until he was seven years old. Even then he noticed that the demeanour of the elders toward the white farmers was like worshipping them.
He felt pity for them. But more than that, he was perplexed by the reverence for other human beings. Xhosa cosmology was not constructed to accommodate the worship of living beings. So he resented these false idols, who were vicious and violent to the dignified pillars of his community; the fathers and grandfathers that they referred to as “boys”.
His wish was to get away from the farm, to avoid maturing to the age of susceptibility to abuse by the farm owners. Danger was all he wanted to flee from. He had no political concepts to describe why those farm owners had to be avoided, let alone the notion of their being obstacles to political freedom.
Ironically, it was the myopia of former Ciskei president Lennox Sebe that introduced the boy to the concepts of freedom and equality. Sebe was warning, for the umpteenth time, about the threat of communists and terrorists. When he said these communists and terrorists were claiming to be fighting for freedom and equality, he inadvertently inspired the boy to covet what the communists and terrorists wanted.
His adolescent mind was particularly captivated by the word equality, which of course he was not processing in political terms. He knew it from being taught to treat all older people as his parents and all other children as his siblings and on that basis, to share fairly and respect equally.
With this understanding of equality, this boy wished those terrorists and communists did not exist only in Sebe’s mind, because if they win their fight for equality then he could someday be able to live in the way that the white farmers and their families did.
As he waited excitedly for his turn to vote, he now knew that Sebe lied by calling the freedom fighters “communists” and “terrorists.” But still he did not care to know the faces of these freedom fighters, as long as they were committed to what, not who, he was about to vote for.
The boy voted for freedom because he wanted no human obstacle to the horizon of his dreams. He voted for freedom from fear of being authentic about what is right and wrong. He voted for freedom not to worship another human being; the false idols who believe that might is right, authority is divinity.
That boy might not have known that his pursuit of freedom was the contrast of tyranny. Yet, he was born into a world where “baas” was the law, owned you, beat you and decided how many cattle you could own. Baas decided who, among the black children, was too good a shepherd to be allowed to go to school.
That boy was born into the world where his elders worshipped a living being; not because they thought he was divine, but because they knew he was evil and their fate was in his hands. He knew tyranny through experiencing and witnessing it, although he didn’t know the word for it.
Curiously, as a grown man, that boy began to vote like an automaton; the ballot paper lost its worth, and its charm. He might have fallen victim to the ubiquity of cultic fixation with the politician and the party, not their service in the cause for freedom and justice.
To break the spell I repurposed my philosophy 101 question and asked, “Why is there freedom rather than tyranny?” Let us not be philosophical about it for now. All that we wanted was unfettered proprietorship of our lives; to be authors and dramatis personae in our stories. The antithesis of this freedom is tyranny, and its manifestation is the imposition of my will on you. We recognised tyranny and that the struggle for freedom was animated by its force. The point is to recognise it again, because it has begun enveloping the world insidiously.
Unable to withstand the bitter taste of Jacob Zuma’s chalice of betrayal, Fikile Mbalula had the audacity to say “we” (the governing party) lied about Nkandla to protect him (Jacob Zuma).
Was it not Mbalula and the governing party that defied the report of the public protector and the Republic of South Africa on this matter? If a tyrant is an absolute ruler who imposes their will, unrestrained by the law, then Nkandla was a theatre of tyranny.
Why is there freedom rather than tyranny? By now we do know why. But what I am not sure we are on the lookout for is tyranny. Suicidal as it may be in the long run, political parties are becoming more corporate than popular. But somewhere I read that, “the arch of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”.
Mzwandile Manto kaB Wapi is an independent philosopher and community activist.
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