Finance Minister Trevor Manuel is among eleven Cabinet ministers and three deputy ministers who have tendered their resignations. Their letters of resignation had been received by President Thabo Mbeki “which, regretfully, he has had to accept”, the presidency said in a statement on Tuesday.
Among them was Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who had earlier in the day made her own announcement. She steps down from the position to which she was appointed after ANC president Jacob Zuma was released from his responsibilities as deputy president in 2005.
One of the reasons she gave was to allow a new president the opportunity to choose their own deputy. The ANC has chosen its deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe for caretaker president, but his appointment remains subject to a vote in the National Assembly on Thursday when Mbeki’s resignation will take effect.
Another resignation was that of Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad, who has been expected to leave office ever since the ANC’s decision on Saturday to recall Mbeki. “His resignation will come into effect once they accept the president’s resignation in parliament,” his spokesman Samson Phakwago said on Monday.
Mbeki’s letter of resignation was received by the National Assembly on Sunday, after the ANC’s announcement on Saturday that it was recalling him. The move followed a Pietermaritzburg High Court judgment which found Zuma might not have been incorrect in “averring political meddling in his prosecution” and ruled that prosecution invalid.
The court suggested that Mbeki may have been behind a political plot against Zuma. Zuma had faced a charge each of racketeering and money laundering, two charges of corruption and 12 charges of fraud related to the multi-billion rand government arms deal. He was charged in 2005, but that case was struck from the roll in 2006. He was re-charged in December 2007.
The other ministers whose resignations were announced on Tuesday were those of: defence, Mosiuoa Lekota; intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils; correctional services, Ngconde Balfour; public enterprises, Alec Erwin; science and technology, Mosibudi Mangena; public works, Thoko Didiza; provincial and local government, Sydney Mufamadi; and public service and administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.
The deputy ministers who resigned are those of: foreign affairs, Aziz Pahad; finance, Jabu Moleketi and correctional services, Loretta Jacobus. “The resignations will be effective from the day that the president’s resignation takes effect[ Thursday],” the presidency said. “All the ministers have expressed their availability to assist the incoming administration in the hand-over process and any other assistance that might be sought from them.
“President Mbeki thanked the deputy president, the ministers and the deputy ministers for their dedicated service to the nation and wished them well in their future endeavours,” it said. Mangena’s resignation was on the instruction of his party, Azapo. The decision to remove Mbeki from office had left the country in a “state of uncertainty and confusion, thereby leading to a crisis in government”, Azapo said. A minister who is not resigning just yet is Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
“As a disciplined and loyal member and deployee of the African National Congress, I remain committed in my duties as the country’s Health Minister serving at the pleasure of my movement, the African National Congress,” she said in a statement on Tuesday. “I remain committed in doing so in the context of the Parliamentary processes associated with the recent political developments in the country, and I will continue to do just that”, she said. In the statement, her ministry said recent media reports suggesting that she was not prepared to be re-deployed, should it be necessary, could not go unchallenged. Asked at a media briefing in Cape Town on Monday whether she intended resigning, Tshabalala-Msimang had replied that she remained obliged to perform all the public service duties associated with her office. It was in this context that she was launching a report into the performance of public hospitals and would participate in the National Assembly debate on the Medicines and Related Substances Amendment Bill on Tuesday, her ministry said.
Meanwhile political analyst Audrey Matshiqi said the string of Caninet resignations are an indication of a sectionalised African National Congress. “Their resignation is an indication of how sectionalised the ANC has become over the last 3.5 years,” said the senior political analyst for the Centre for Policy Studies. He said most of the ministers seemed to have made the decision to resign on a “factional basis”.
When it came to the finance ministry resignations – “It is a problem that there will be jitters in the market and the rand is weakening right now; which means the ANC will have to act expediently to calm the markets down and calm the people of the country down by ensuring an effective transitional process” He said if the cabinet ministers had stayed on it would have made it easier for the ANC to manage the process.
“Their resignation makes the management of the transitional process much more difficult. Now it is faced with managing the challenge while dealing with instability. “Are they [the ministers and deputies who have resigned] part of a group that is going to split [from the ANC]? I don’t know” Matshiqi said a possible split of the ANC would be significant if it was a sizeable and qualitatively significant portion of ANC leadership who left. He said the impact on the ANC probably would not be felt in the short term but could become serious in the medium and long term.
The rand dropped sharply on Tuesday following the announcement of the resignations. “The rand lost an incredible amount of ground on the news, but it has clawed its way back a bit,” said Russell Lamberti, economist at Econometrix.
Before the announcement, the rand was trading at 7.98 to the US dollar. After the revelation that Manuel was going, it slipped to 8.16 against the US dollar. Bonds too sold off after the announcement, but came back, he added. Equities on the JSE lost ground too, but also pared their loses. “The market is trying to digest the news — and when that happens there is a lot of volatility. There’s a great deal of uncertainty and confusion,” Lamberti added.
