ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule said Monday’s meeting of the party’s top six officials would not discuss a potential cabinet reshuffle.
The party’s top leaders meet every Monday. The meeting occurs as speculation grows about who will become South Africa’s deputy president after Cyril Ramaphosa replaced Jacob Zuma as president two weeks ago.
There’ve also been calls for a cabinet reshuffle following Zuma’s resignation. Speaking after a meeting of the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC) on Sunday, Magashule said the topic was not on the top six’s agenda.
“On Monday we have a normal officials’ meeting, so if this matter arises we’ll discuss it there. We are going to move with speed to ensure that the issue of cabinet, there’s not anxiety about it. If it comes it will be part of our discussions and we’ll move forward with that,” he said.
However, political analyst Khaya Sithole said it wass unlikely that the ANC NEC did not discuss these pressing matters.
“There’s a public agenda and there’s a real agenda. You can imagine that it would be very strange for the entire NEC to be meeting for a whole day and not deal with the elephant in the room in the fact that we’ve got a new administration and a reshuffle is inevitable, if for no other reason than there’s a vacancy in the Deputy President’s position.”
“So of course they would have discussed it but it cannot be part of an ANC press conference because it’s not a party question, it’s a government issue. So you’d expect that it’ll come from the Union Buildings rather than Irene. So for me that’s how they played the politics,” Sithole said.
ANC Spokesperson Pule Mabe said, “Give the ANC space to reflect on this. There are individuals in the leadership who are bestowed with the prerogative to make such decisions. We have addressed this point on numerous occasions in your platforms. What I can tell you is that you will be the first to know.”No matter how much of an investigative whim you try to put in there, it’s not going to help. There’s a prerogative and media must stop speculating.”
“Along the way the name of Dlamini-Zuma has been raised in a manner that begins to undermine her own integrity and standing in the movement. So i don’t think we should continue to do that. The unity of the ANC is also going to require the media to work closely with us to make sure we achieve this.”
Mabe said that cadres of the ANC can “never be against each other” because the selection procedures are based on supported approvals.
[source: enca]
