Press conference: DA unveils 2010 report card

Note to editors: The following statement accompanies a press conference held in Parliament this morning, which was presented by DA Parliamentary Leader Athol Trollip MP, DA National Spokesperson Lindiwe Mazibuko MP, and the Chairperson of the DA's Parliamentary Caucus James Masango MP. The Cabinet Report Card document that was presented at that press conference is available for download.

Every year, the Democratic Alliance (DA) produces a Cabinet Report Card reflecting our assessment of the performance of the members of the Cabinet, in keeping with our constitutionally mandated oversight role as the official opposition. Democratic governments must account to the people who voted them into power, and part and parcel of this is being subjected to regular evaluation. In South Africa, it is particularly important that such evaluations occur, because of the weaknesses of the proportional representation system in instilling accountability, and because the ANC government conducts almost no critical evaluations of the members of its executive, and finally, because of the urgency of the socio-economic challenges we face as a country.

Our report card gives the 27 cabinet ministers who survived President Zuma's October purge, an overall score of 4.7 out of 10. This is down slightly from the 5.4 that we awarded the same group last year. The nine ministers who were relieved of their duties score a total of 3.8 - almost no different to the 3.9 they scored in 2009.

We believe the top performer in the Zuma administration is Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan, who received a score of 9, the highest score the DA has ever given to a minister in our annual scorecard. His record has been first-rate in every respect, and the fact that he has not been able to obtain the full cooperation of the rest of the Cabinet with all his plans is the only concern that prevents him from obtaining a perfect 10.

President Zuma is one of the weakest performers in his own Cabinet, scoring only 2. This low score was earned for a year of broken promises and failure to practice as he preaches, and for his complete failure to drive critical projects.

Many of the appointments to his Cabinet have performed equally poorly. On the other hand, however, there have been some significant successes. President Zuma's new Cabinet contains more absolute failures, but also more stars, than the cabinets that served under former President Thabo Mbeki.

This year we have changed the format of the scorecard slightly. We have broken down our evaluation of the 2010 Cabinet into the three components of ministers' jobs that we believe to be most critical to their performance. While it is not always easy to measure Cabinet members against each other according to the same criteria, because different departments face different problems and have different priorities, there are certain basic requirements that all ministers should meet to be good at their jobs.

We have therefore looked separately at, firstly, the political and strategic direction each minister has set their respective department on; secondly, the degree to which the minister has been open and accountable about his or her policies and actions and finally, how effectively the minister has managed his or her department to give effect to these policies.

For the ministers who have held their positions since 2009, the 18 months they have had is more than enough time for them to have made an impact, good or bad, on their departments, and to be evaluated on their actions. Where new appointments have been made in the last month, it has been difficult to provide a fair estimate of their performance in this time, and so we have provided a brief overview of their past careers, and made some tentative predictions. We have also considered, and rated, the actions of their predecessors over the past year, because this will be the legacy that the new ministers will have to confront.

We believe that one of the stars of the Zuma administration is Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi, who is quietly and judiciously going about undoing all the damage done to this department by some of his predecessors. At the other end of the spectrum, two dismal performers deservedly lost their positions.

The communications industry was relieved of the stale influence of Siphiwe Nyanda, whose maladministration and centralising tendencies have severely hobbled the movement of this industry into the 21st century. Women, children and the disabled were not helped one iota by the completely rudderless performance of Minister of Women and Children, Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya, who earned our only zero score. We simply could not find a single achievement to take note of.

At the same time, however, it is hard to find any reason why State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele was retained, or why Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande is still being allowed to use universities as test cases for his grand ideas on eliminating quality from tertiary education. Minister Cwele scored a 1; Minister Nzimande a 2.

In a year in which our economy shed nearly a million jobs, some members of the Cabinet demonstrated a profound deafness to a call from the President to tighten their belts. Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa, for example, while doing little to improve the performance of the police (and, in fact, lowering crime reduction targets), spent enthusiastically on personal indulgences, including vehicles, giant billboards of his own face and luxury hotels.

One of the only Cabinet members to take this call to cut costs really seriously seems to have been Housing Minister Tokyo Sexwale, whose ban on business class flights and other austerity measures have reportedly saved R120m.

President Zuma's 2010 Cabinet is, in short, a thoroughly diverse mix of appointments in terms of quality. Of the 25 members who survived the purge in October, just over half, 13, scored a pass mark of 5 or higher. The average score for the surviving members of Cabinet fell by 0.7 points over the past year, pointing to a gradual decline in the overall performance of this administration.

Statement issued by Athol Trollip, MP, Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader, December 2 2010

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