President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Photo: Per Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)
Given tensions within the new coalition government, there is little prospect of knowing who will be in President Cyril Ramaphosa's new cabinet by the end of this week.
The presidency said Ramaphosa, who will be sworn in for another term on Wednesday, did not want to waste time but also did not want to rush the complex process.
“The president will consult with the ruling party, the alliance and the GNU. [government of national unity] “We will assist in forming a cabinet,” spokesman Vincent Mugwenya said.
“Once the consultations are over, he will make an announcement. Indeed, he does not want the consultation process to delay the appointment and announcement of his cabinet. But he fully understands the complexity of the task he has to manage.”
Talks with the ANC's alliance partners have already begun but are more tense than usual given the South African Communist Party (SACP)'s opposition to signing a pact with the Democratic Alliance (DA).
It would be natural for President Ramaphosa to welcome the South African Communist Party into his government and in this regard he has several options, including Deputy Finance Minister David Masondo.
Cosatu, the trade union confederation that makes up the remaining third of the three-party coalition, said on Tuesday it was important that the government composition respect “workers' rights and the reform agenda” as well as the constitution and rule of law, as promised in a letter of intent signed by future coalition partners.
“There are issues that are very important to workers and Cosatu is always raising them with the president to ensure that the government is biased towards the needs of working-class communities,” Cosatu's parliamentary organiser and acting spokesperson Matthew Parkes said.
“The economic cluster portfolio has always been important to Labor. It's very important.”
However, it remains to be seen whether all portfolios within this cluster will ultimately transfer to the ANC.
The party has assured its new coalition partners that all security posts are reserved for the ANC, but there are suggestions the DA could be offered the posts of deputy finance minister and even trade and industry minister.
Although basic education is on the agenda, it is understood the DA is reluctant to tackle the area.
Apart from resistance from alliance partners, there are groups within Ramaphosa's camp that support a coalition with the DA rather than the alternative of working with the Economic Freedom Fighters, but are opposed to including the party in cabinet.
Instead, they proposed an agreement in which the ANC would control the executive and the DA would have key positions in parliament, arguing that this would allow each to maintain its separate identity and ideology.
But the two parties' chief negotiators came to different decisions, and by this week concerns about party identity had shifted more openly to a personal focus on securing posts, with fewer positions available to ANC members in the future. President Ramaphosa, who has always valued experience and continuity, is also under pressure from his core supporters within the party to appoint younger ministers.
How to cut the cake was one of the “key issues” in agreeing the broad terms of forming the coalition, Helen Gill, chair of the Democratic Party's federal executive committee, said Friday.
Zille and ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula signed the agreement more than an hour into the first sitting of the National Assembly on Friday, allowing the two parties to proceed with the joint selection of candidates for speaker and deputy speaker.
Article 16 of the document states that the government will be included in the agreement “taking into account the number of seats of each political party in the National Assembly and the need to advance the national interest” and will be “constituted in a manner that reflects the true inclusiveness of the political parties” represented in the parliament.
It continues: “In structuring the executive branch, the President must take into account the results of the election.”
Zille acknowledged that the ANC had sought to remove the wording of Article 16 just hours before Parliament was due to sit.
This would remove the requirement that the allocation of cabinet seats broadly mirror the distribution of seats in parliament, allowing the president to prioritise his own requests to the ANC when deciding who to appoint.
However, the DA prevailed and the language was reinstated.
A senior DA negotiator said on Tuesday the DA would not be satisfied with just adding a few cabinet posts.
The party, which has 87 seats in parliament, plans to hold the president to the terms of Friday's agreement but declined to give an exact number for the number of cabinet ministers, saying it would depend on the size of the final executive branch.
“We represent about 30% of the parties that founded GNU. We work from there.”
The question is who in the DA caucus and shadow cabinet is fit and amenable. One of the party's most senior MPs has ruled out taking on a ministerial post. DA leader John Steenhuisen is seen as a sure choice, as is the party's floor whip Siviwe Gwalbe, who was not nominated for deputy speaker, a post won by Annelie Lotorie. As for Steenhuisen, it is now openly said that President Ramaphosa may nominate him as minister in the presidency.
President Ramaphosa's calculations will also depend on how many new allies he ultimately has to accept.
By Tuesday evening, the number was five. The Inkatha Freedom Party signed a letter of intent on Friday evening, followed by Gayton McKenzie's Patriotic Union and Patricia de Lille's Good Party. The last to sign was the Pan-African Congress.
While the ANC officially remains hopeful of persuading other parties, it has not continued to lobby Rise Mzansi, which currently holds two seats in parliament but has resisted calls to join a governing coalition that is raising doubts about whether it will survive the 2026 local government elections.
McKenzie has made it clear he wants to be a minister, not a backbencher. Goode has made no demands and acknowledges that a poor performance in last month's general election – the party currently holds just one seat in the National Assembly to the Palestinian Authority's nine – does not automatically qualify him for ministerial status.
Goode's general secretary, Brett Herron, said the party had agreed to join the coalition because the “minimum core priorities” set out in the letter of intent were aligned with the party's core policies.
It was important that it included a commitment to tackling poverty and spatial inequality, he said.
“We took this job on principle, not for positions,” he said, adding that the two-time minister was ready to join the executive branch if called upon but would not take it for granted.
By law, President Ramaphosa has no deadline for appointing his cabinet.
Article 87 of the Constitution allows for a grace period of up to five days between the National Assembly's presidential election and the inauguration, but it is silent on how long the president may consult and deliberate before appointing new ministers.
For the time being, government departments will continue to function under their directors, but the moment President Ramaphosa takes the oath, ministers will no longer be ministers.
Parliament has published a draft platform for its first term, which says committee chairs will be elected on July 5. But while most of these posts have previously been filled by ANC members (with the notable exception of the watchdog Standing Committee on Public Accounts), they are now expected to be part of coalition negotiations.
If a coalition government is not announced by then, this item on the parliamentary agenda is likely to be postponed.
Meanwhile, Jacob Zuma's Umkhonto weSizwe party, which boycotted parliament on Friday, indicated over the weekend that its 58 lawmakers would belatedly report to parliament to be sworn in, despite it mounting a legal challenge to the election results.
But no word has yet been given to parliament as to when the oath will be taken. The party has announced it will boycott the presidential swearing-in ceremony at the Union Buildings on Wednesday.
