Pressure on Ramaphosa to do away with deputy ministers

Pressure is mounting on South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa to trim his cabinet and do away with deputy ministers.

This follows revelations that two deputy police ministers had gone for over a year without any specific responsibilities delegated to them.

This week, deputy police minister Cassel Mathale told the ad hoc committee in parliament that suspended police minister Senzo Mchunu had not delegated duties to him and his counterpart, Polly Boshielo.

Some political parties and activists have criticised the establishment of some deputy minister positions as a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Dennis Bloem from the Activists and Citizens Forum commented: “I have said many times that the country doesn’t need deputy ministers. I want to repeat that I don’t even know some of these deputy ministers and what they are doing. Activists and Citizens Forum urges president Ramaphosa to remove all deputy ministers because they are just a burden to the taxpayers of this country. They add no value at all.”

ActionSA says there is more justification for the removal of the position of deputy minister.

This follows Ramaphosa’s appointment of Firoz Cachalia as police minister after Mchunu was placed on a leave of absence.

ActionSA parliamentary caucus leader Athol Trollip says: “When the police minister was placed on suspension – Senzo Mchunu – we saw that the president didn’t use one of the deputy ministers who you’d think would be the perfect people to stand in for a minister on suspension. The president went outside of cabinet, outside of his bloated deputy ministers and went and found Firoz Cachalia from academia. That indicates that the positions of deputy ministers is really redundant. Because if you’re going to replace a minister with another minister to act in another department, you really are saying that deputy minister positions are just positions of patronage.”

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