The suspension of Deputy Minister for Small Business Development, Dipuo Peters, brings into focus a question which enthusiasts of South African politics have long grappled with: why do we even need deputy ministers?
This question extends into other areas, such as why do we have a deputy president, the deputy presiding officers in Parliament, deputy mayors and even deputy leaders of political parties?
The decision to suspend Ms Peters follows a sanction adopted by Parliament’s Joint Committee on Ethics and Members Interests against the Deputy Minister. The Committee found that the deputy minister had breached the Code of Ethical Conduct in her former portfolio as Minister of Transport.
In a statement issued on Friday, the Presidency said Peters has been informed of her suspension in writing.
Columnist and Public Administration student at the University of Pretoria, Neo Malebana Ndlalane, endeavours to identify the shortfalls and unnecessariness of these positions in modern South Africa. He had this to say:
Our constitution and legislation make provision for deputy positions to complement executive offices in the public sector at national (deputy president, deputy ministers, deputy speaker of the National Assembly, Deputy Chairpersons of the National Council of Provinces, deputy chief justice, etc.) and local government (deputy mayors).
The only exception has been extended to provincial government, whose premiers are not allowed a deputy premier. The law makes a vague reference to the duty of these deputies by simply stating that they are there to assist the prime official in the execution of their responsibilities or even assume the prime position in an acting capacity.
What South Africans have witnessed, however, is failure by deputy public officials to carry out this mandate.
First and foremost, resentment, not cordiality, often plague the relationship between the prime official and their deputy. Few people will forget the rivalry that engulfed the South African political scene in the early 2000s between then President Mbeki and then Deputy President Zuma. Such resentment is quite common and stems from a number of things.
The first stem of resentment is political ambition. Once an individual assumes a deputy position, they assume that the prime position is within their grasp. A deputy minister, for example, naturally considers the idea of their promotion to the position of minister because the assumption is that the former position is a springboard to the latter position. This ambition clouds the deputy official’s judgment, leading him/her to occupy themself with avenues to get the top job instead of their legal mandate to assist the incumbent.
The incumbent prime official, for example a minister, then views their deputy minister with a sense of distrust and suspicion since the former assumes that the latter is out to snatch their job. Instead of sharing responsibility or seeking advice from their deputy, the prime official instead isolates the deputy leading to the deputy position becoming a ceremonial post, devoid of any significant authority.
Such isolation is likely to continue as more and more coalition governments are being formed in South Africa, sometimes leading to a mayor, for example, and a deputy mayor emerging from two different political parties.
The lack of will to reform the law to abolish, if not curtail, these deputy positions has been hamstrung by the culture of political patronage which has set firmly in South African politics. Basically, the more positions there are, the more a leader can appoint their political allies in order to keep their support. This is part of the reason why ministerial positions are often overly numerous and duplicated.
Alongside the issue of getting rid of deputy positions, the issue of limiting the number of ministries has been hamstrung by political patronage (as has been done at provincial level, where the premier can only appoint ten members to the executive council). As it pertains to deputy ministers, who are not even considered members of cabinet, why are they needed in Pretoria when they could easily remain ordinary members of the National Assembly in Cape Town? South Africa is a parliamentary republic after all.
There is definitely common-sense rationale to abolish the position of deputy ministers alongside other deputy positions. Taxpayers’ money is the first consideration; why spend more on the cost of deputy ministers, in addition to the already costly ministers, when we could easily keep them as members of the Assembly, on MP costs, and only call upon them to deputise for ministers when needed.
Secondly, if concern is raised regarding who will assist prime officials once the deputy positions are abolished, then I say that there are directors-general, HODs, city managers, etc. for a reason.
READ MORE: Cabinet extends tenure of HODs to ten years.
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