[DEBATE] : (Fwd) More cabinet heartburn

[Dominic Tweedie]

Moi? L'etat ce n'est pas moi!

See the framework document that I have posted. This is the clearest
available blueprint we have. If there are deviations from it, then the
deviations will be news. So it is a yardstick.

Jay Naidoo was not fired for any stunt. Jay Naidoo was set up, as a
single minister, to act as a sort of sub-Treasury, with so-called "RDP
money". Jay Naidoo's demise was a small part of the 1996 class
project, the major part of which was GEAR.

What has not been settled is whether the cabinet will sit as a whole,
or whether the Party's idea of having a smaller cabinet, plus
non-cabinet ministers, as in Britain, for one example, will be
applied. This is part of the RDP argument in a sense, because the
wreckage of the RDP was patched, or attempted to be patched, by the
"clusters", which were not a success. If all ministers rank equally,
the Presidency must conduct the entire orchestra. Better to have
principal ministers and delegation, probably, even if just from the
practical point of view of having cabinet meetings that are manageable
in terms of size and agenda.

Manuel is now in the Presidency. "Keep your friends close and your
enemies closer" springs to mind. In any case, it is the responsibility
of the President, if it is in the Presidency. We will have to wait and
see.

Dividing Minerals and Energy is something for the "Mineral-Energy
Complex" fundis to chew on. At first glance maybe it is time that the
Complex is broken asunder, given the Load-Shedding fiasco of last
year.

You, the Higher Education bods, will have to take the gap now with
Blade as your Minister. If you don't do so pdq, it will be cold
comfort to blame Blade later. So what are you going to do?

You have as usual got the wrong, utilitarian end of the stick about
Human Settlements, Patrick. The real argument here is a much more
profound one than the plumbing, etc. (and I write as an experienced
tradesman, as you know). This is a long-overdue switch from the
atomised, commodified and worse-than-approximate basis of urban
planning around the bourgeois and suburban family model, commodified
as units. It allows a qualitative discussion about how people really
live and associate themselves, without more received baggage than is
unavoidable. It allows a vanguard/mass interaction and dialogue about
the spacial organisation of society, that is more political than
simply functional. It could be a great liberation. Whether Tokyo is
the intellectual for all this, remains to be seen. Your recollection
of Tokyo in 1994 is incomplete, by the way. Remember Bart Dorrestein?
Remember Joe Slovo, then the minister, coming down on Tokyo like a ton
of bricks? Tokyo has certainly had plenty of time to think about this
portfolio.

Rural Development cannot be "Two Economies logic". Of course it is
exactly the reverse. The danger is that freedom is reserved for the
towns in the feudal "Stadluft Mak Frei" manner, while the rest of the
country falls under latifundia using contract labour and transnational
bigbiz tourism. The Rural Development brief is to unify town and
country, not on a hayseed basis but on the same basis, i.e. you must
be as free in every way wherever you live in SA.

DTI is not competent to plan anything. DTI is an Augean stable that
will take years to clean. Better to take out mission-critical
functions from there.

I think I'll pass on the rest for now if you don't mind.


Domza "News Time" VC


2009/5/10 Patrick Bond <pbond at mail.ngo.za>:
> Dominic, can't you give us better insights on the personalities who've made
> it on up?
>