This of course raises the stakes for grabbing the department and appointing new, pliant, tender officers.
A number of other cabinet appointments also suggest that Zuma has his sights set on benefiting from big tenders and contracts.
For example, the presumption is that the former energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersen – a Zuma loyalist – was fired because she failed to make sufficient progress in signing a proposed nuclear power deal with the Russians.
This presumption is strengthened by the fact that Zuma has removed the nuclear build programme from the Department of Energy, and placed it under Eskom, which has a number of people closely connected to the Guptas on its board.
The new energy minister, Mmamoloko Kubayi, showed her colours as a Zuma supporter when she defended him over the scandal, around the president’s use of public funds on his private homestead.
Who wasn’t fired in the cabinet reshuffle is also telling.
Zuma didn’t remove the Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini who is accused of incompetence in handling a contract for the distribution of social grants.
She heads the ANC Women’s League which remains firmly in Zuma’s camp.
But ministers are seldom removed from their positions for incompetence – in South Africa as well as elsewhere in the world. Competence is, at most, a secondary criterion for their appointments – they’re normally given posts because they lead important factions or are key supporters of the head of state.
What of the media?
There’s widespread opposition to Zuma in the press and electronic media with the exception of the Gupta-owned ANN7 and The New Age.
But this may not amount to much.
The views of the media have been at odds with outcomes before.
The media opposed the recall of Mbeki in 2008 but the ANC got rid of him anyway.
One key metric to watch is the rate at which former Zuma supporters now sit on the fence – or come off it – over the next nine months.
The alliance partners are already gone and the ANC’s most numerous and hence most powerful province, KwaZulu-Natal, is split.
At this stage the ANC’s Women’s League, its weakened Youth League the “Premier League”, and one faction of veterans of the ANC’s former military wing, umKhonto we Sizwe, remain the shrinking core of Zuma hardliners. And of course, the Gupta family and associates.
This may be just enough to keep him going until December. Opponents who wish to remove him will have to organise a coalition on the scale of the one which swept Mbeki out of power.
By Keith Gottschalk. This story was first published by The Conversation
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