WATCH | Malema slams ‘painful’ demotion of Zikalala, calls for cabinet reduction

EFF leader Julius Malema has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to reduce the size of his cabinet, specifically deputy ministers, saying they are “unnecessary”.

“Let us reduce the cabinet and do away with deputy ministers. Deputy ministers do not have a role to play; they are unnecessary. We put a lot of money into the offices of deputy ministers who are not even known by anyone.

“They walk about with bodyguards, and people ask themselves who they are. We can save a lot of money by reducing the cabinet and removing deputy ministers,” Malema said during the budget debate on Tuesday in parliament.

He said Ramaphosa's “demotion” of Sihle Zikalala, who was moved from being the minister of public works and infrastructure to being appointed deputy minister of the same department to make way for the DA's Dean Macpherson, was “painful”.

“What you [Ramaphosa] did to Sihle Zikala is painful. When you see Sihle sitting down on a chair and that white man of a minister [Dean Macpherson] sitting next to him, Sihle looks like a poor orphan who has just been given a piece job. Instead of just removing Sihle and doing away with that ministry, you humiliated him,” he said.

Ramaphosa's cabinet, which includes 11 parties of the government of national unity (GNU), has 32 ministers and 43 deputy ministers.

Malema argued some of the ministries within the presidency were “useless”, adding that the office should instead focus on crime and lack of water.

“Let that water crisis sit in the office of the president if you mean it. We don't have a crisis of intelligence; that thing is imagination. The crisis is water in Giyani. Why is water not in the office of the president? Because that's what we are faced with. Why is crime not in the office of the president?

“You have something called monitoring and evaluation, which can't monitor itself. How can it monitor other ministries when it has no capacity to monitor itself? We are making a call to say that instead of having these useless departments, bring the police into your office because crime is a serious issue in South Africa.”

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