President Ramaphosa reneges on performance agreements with Cabinet

12 July 2020

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has established that President Cyril Ramaphosa has reneged on his promise to enhance political accountability of Ministers and their Deputies by failing to finalize the signing of their performance agreements.

This development, which marks a spectacular reversal of the President’s commitment to herald a new era of transparency and accountability within the Executive, was contained in documents presented before the portfolio committee of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation stating that the “signing of performance agreements was suspended depend(ing) on the decision of the President.”

During his State of the Nation Address in February 2020, the President announced with boundless vigor that he would be signing these performance agreements.

At the time, the President declared that: “I will be signing performance agreement with all Ministers before the end of this month. These targets which are based on the targets contained in the Medium-Term Strategic Framework,  will be made public so that that the people of South Africa can hold those who they elected into the office in account.” (SONA 13 Feb 2020)

More than a year later, these agreements have been aborted without any indication of their possible resurrection in the foreseeable future, joining the ever-growing list of President Ramaphosa’s broken promises.

It is now clear that the President’s sole motivation was to abort holding his comrades accountable by opting for political expediency to shield his Ministers' performances from public scrutiny.

The DA will be writing to the President demanding detailed reasons for his reluctance to proceed with the finalization of these performance agreements. If the President is a man of his word, he must immediately release these performance agreements.

Issued by Solly Malatsi, DA Shadow Minister of the Presidency, 12 July 2020