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Jacob Zuma seeks to reassure with Cabinet picks

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South Africa’s new president named his Cabinet on Sunday, moving the widely respected finance minister to a new position that will still give him a role steering the economy on a course intended to reassure international investors.

The decision to shift Trevor Manuel, who had become the emblem of South Africa’s impressive economic performance over the last 13 years, was a delicate matter for President Jacob Zuma. Rumors last year that Manuel had resigned caused the nation’s currency, the rand, to tumble.

But Zuma appointed Manuel to a potentially more powerful job, putting him in charge of strategic government planning and coordination of ministries.

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“Comrade Trevor Manuel has been given a new structure, a very powerful structure that is going to work out a national plan of government,” Zuma told reporters Sunday.

The market’s main fear was that Zuma might appoint a leftist ally to the finance post as payback for support of his presidential bid. But Zuma named Pravin Gordhan, who as head of the tax service turned the department around, bringing in millions of rand in increased tax revenue.

Zuma said he expected the international markets to welcome the appointments. But he added: “Who can predict the markets?”

News of Manuel’s shift to planning had been strategically leaked to newspapers in recent days to avoid a sudden economic shock.

“Investors will breathe a sigh of relief and say it looks like he intends to keep macro-economic policies on the same track,” said Alec Russell, author of “Bring Me My Machine Gun,” an analysis of the power struggles in the ruling African National Congress, or ANC, which helped bring Zuma to power.

“It says, ‘I’m not a scary populist who’s going to send policy sharply to the left,’ ” Russell said. “It says, ‘I listen to business and I’m aware of their concerns.’ ”

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“He got it right on the economic cluster of ministries,” analyst William Gumede said. “It does say clearly that he wants to get the economy right. That’s where his priorities are.”

Gumede said Manuel would be the most powerful person in government after Zuma and Kgalema Motlanthe, his deputy president. Motlanthe held the presidency briefly after Zuma’s supporters in the ANC toppled former President Thabo Mbeki in September.

Zuma said he wanted to see a major improvement in the delivery of services in the next five years. “We reiterate that we will not tolerate laziness and incompetence and that we will emphasize excellence and achievement,” he said.

But analysts differed on how effective Zuma’s appointments would be in addressing that issue.

After 15 years in power, the ANC’s biggest failure has been its inability to reduce poverty, cut unemployment and deliver enough educated graduates to feed a skills-starved economy. The country has a huge pool of poor, unskilled workers but not enough professionals.

Gumede said the Cabinet appointments sent mixed messages about Zuma: He tried to balance factions in the party and in some cases appointed close allies or political time-servers to key jobs.

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He said the appointments were less impressive in terms of improving service delivery.

Former Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was appointed to run the chaotic and dysfunctional Home Affairs Ministry, recently criticized by the U.S. State Department for corruption and poor administration.

“At home, people see the Home Affairs Ministry as absolute incompetence and abroad as well,” Gumede said. “It’s just a lax department. Everything from passports to travel documents, everything needs to be fixed. One would have expected somebody much more inspiring. We didn’t get that.”

But Russell said that putting Manuel in charge of strategic planning sent a message that Zuma was serious about improving on delivery of services, after the patchy performance under Mbeki.

“It’s very interesting because one of the greatest shortcomings of Mbeki government was its failure to build on its policies to deliver tangible results for people living in townships,” he said.

The ANC government’s performance on healthcare has also been criticized, in particular the failure to deliver the life-prolonging anti-retroviral medicines for HIV/AIDS patients quickly enough.

Barbara Hogan, appointed health minister last year, won praise from health activists in her brief time as head of the department. Hogan, who angered ANC colleagues by criticizing the recent decision not to deny a visa to the Dalai Lama, was shifted sideways to take charge of public enterprises.

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She was replaced by Aaron Motsoaledi, a former provincial bureaucrat from the Zuma base of Limpopo province.

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robyn.dixon@latimes.com

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