Is the enlarged South African cabinet, announced by President Jacob Zuma, too big? Perhaps, but not much more than many countries. If South Africa is suffering from cabinet minister inflation, so is the rest of the world.
A glance at the number of cabinet ministers in a range of countries, some in the developed world, some not, some in Africa, some in the East, shows that none have less than 15, the figure for the US, and some have more than South Africa’s.
Uganda 48
Pakistan 44
Zimbabwe 35
South Africa 34
Australia 32
Malaysia 29
Brazil 26
Mauritania 25
Tanzania 25
UK 22
Sweden 21
Italy 21
Mexico 18
US 15
Hungary 15
The list is chosen randomly, and I used information from the CIA website, the only quickly available source I could find. The CIA website lists only ministers, not deputy ministers, so that there may be distortions there. If you include deputy ministers, South Africa’s cabinet numbers 62, which is a lot of people to get around the table.
However, the Aussie cabinet, for example, has 53 people if parliamentary secretaries are included. I don’t know if they are considered part of the cabinet, but they are listed as part of ministries, and include, for instance, the parliamentary secretary for government service delivery.
There is concern about cabinet inflation elsewhere in the world. According to the Jerusalem Post of April 11 Israel had a law, now in abeyance, that limited the cabinet size to 18.
The Post comments about the 30-member Israeli cabinet:
“There’s no firm data on how much our ‘super-size me’ cabinet will cost taxpayers. But just watching such a bloated government around the cabinet table is demoralising. The irony is that in his 1996-99 stint Netanyahu was the last premier to implement the now-abrogated Basic Law that demanded a cabinet of no more than 18 ministers. His successor Ehud Barak established a 25-minister cabinet. The floodgates were completely opened when Ariel Sharon amended the law. Netanyahu knows his economics, so — political exigencies notwithstanding — he really should have done better.”
Prof C Northcote Parkinson, of Parkinson’s Law fame, writing in the mid-1950s observed the average for 60 countries measured was 16, and only centrally planned economies, such as the USSR with 38, had more than 21 members in cabinet.
Parkinson reckoned that when any cabinet exceeds 20 or 21 members a “point of ineffectiveness” is reached, and a smaller, inner cabinet naturally forms to make decisions.
South Africa passed the 20 mark some time ago. Who will really call the shots in the new dispensation?
Hi Reg – the CIA has got its facts wrong. Uganda has only 25, Pakistan 37 and Australia 19. So ours ranks pretty high in the list of all-time biggest cabinets. Is it too big? Too big for what? If it is efficient, it is the right size. But I can’t see how you run a cabinet meeting with 62 attendees. Inevitably, you’ll see a kitchen cabinet developing – an inner circle running the show. And how you prevent turf battles between ministers whose portfolios have been carved out of others’?
What a pleasantly succinct and intelligent article. Thank you, Mr Rumney. It is like a breath of fresh air amid all of the unintelligible crap that is being written about the new administration’s configuration. I’d be interested to know the outcome of correlating this with administrative policies and approaches. So, do war-hawks like bigger cabinets? Do male-led governments super-size? Do social democrats ever downsize? And so…
I think Zuma knew he had to do this and the creation of new posts and splitting of some of the old ones is designed to create greater focus on MP’s portfolio’s. I didn’t vote for the ANC but this is a good move if they are to advance and deliver what they said they would. Unfortunately some of the posts have not been allocated to the best people in SA but that is politics.
Agreed a large cabinet is not good management practice. They should rather have less cabinet ministers, and split at deputy level. ie a education minister and have 2 or 3 deputies who actually have line fnnction authority. So that would bring the cost down.
Instead we have many cabinet ministers who have to be managed by a central planing office, at probably twice the cost and debatable delivery enhancement.
India, with a population of over 1 billion people, only has 24 cabinet ministers.
Your best administrators are supposed to be in the civil service, not in cabinet.
I understand your logic,whether the information is accurate or not becomes the next available topic.My take on this whole debate would be a simplified one…my belief is if the President opted for a bigger cabinet strictly for perfomance in terms of meeting the challenges as well as providing South Africans with services they so well deserving,then we should support him.There is no amount of money that would repay damages coused by lack of service delivery.
The whole focus should be at together with the government try to find a working approach in terms of making sure that the ministers account to us the public directly.I personally would n’t mind to pay tax that in return would improve the life of our people,anyway that is what we pay our taxes for ie.improving the life of our people.
Trying to waist resource we do not have diverting attention from the main issue will delay and deprive us the opportunity to learn and improve on our conditions
And the USA only has a cabinet of 22 ministers.
Mbuzeni
That is a very positive and wishfull take that you have expressed, and we certainly hope that this new – very large – cabinet will spend taxpayers money wisely and deliver services to those in need of them.
It is POSSIBLE that the expanded cabinet will prove effective in providing expanded services – time will tell.
It is 100% certain that the expanded cabinet will increase the salary and benefits account considerably.
A more cynical and less charitable take on the matter would be that one of the reasons that we now have such a large cabinet is that many political debts have had to be repaid (Cosatu, SACP), factions have been balanced, gender quotas met, and even opponents co-opted (FF+’s Mulder – following in the footsteps of Marthinus Van Schalckwyk, perhaps?).
Certainly the events of Polokwane have let the genie out of the bottle, and it will be interesting to see how the various groupings that in effect managed a regime change (Mbeki clan out, Zuma clan in)are treated now, and whether their needs and aspirations will be met.
One of the first acid tests will be the taxi organisations and BRT system impasse.
I try to remain an optimist, and even if one is not an ANC supporter, surely President’s Zuma’s administration can only be an improvement over Mbeki!
It is going to be very interesting to see how the Zuma administration meets the varied and high expectations of various divergent interest groups, some within the alliance.