Red-soled Dina Pule a no-goer
· Citizen
In one of Cyril Ramaphosa’s strangest decisions as president, he reappointed former communications minister Dina Pule to Cabinet as minister of social development.
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Just to put things in perspective, Pule was given the harshest punishment permissible by National Assembly regulations when she was sanctioned in 2013.
She was suspended, docked a month’s salary and eventually fired as minister. And in 2026, the president and the ANC want SA to believe she has learnt her lesson.
It would appear the president felt her reappointment would go unnoticed in the midst of SA’s embarrassing xenophobic uprising that is threatening to cause untold instability and isolate us from the rest of Africa. That did not happen.
It is almost impossible for anyone to forget the red-soled Louboutin shoes that formed part of the accusations that Pule had allegedly received as minister.
Her firing and the story around it at the time made for serious social gossip column material. How the president thought the reappointment of such a person could go unnoticed is puzzling.
The most rational explanation could be that the ANC has ring-fenced the department of social development’s minister position to solely belong to the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL).
Her predecessor, Sisisi Tolashe, is the president of the ANCWL and was fired from the position following a series of scandals that the president appeared to ignore until he couldn’t any more.
In terms of seniority in league, Pule is right up there to qualify as the next in line, if it is indeed that the ANCWL is guaranteed a Cabinet position by ANC cadre deployment standards.
It is also important to remember that Ramaphosa is a president under attack at the moment. The consequences of the cover-up of the robbery at his Phala Phala farm have guaranteed that the remainder of his term as president will always be a “gift” from his party.
And he dare not anger one of the biggest sections of his party in the form of the ANCWL by making a rational uncontroversial appointment as his replacement for the fired social development minister.
What the ANC and the president have chosen to wilfully ignore is that their being part of what is essentially a coalition government requires them to hold themselves to a higher ethical standard than they had gotten the country accustomed to.
The time for guaranteed cadre deployment appointments to Cabinet went away when it lost its 50% majority in the last national poll.
Even though Cabinet appointments remain the prerogative of the president, the unwritten rules or conditions are that appointments will be acceptable to their biggest partners in the government of national unity.
And sadly for the president and his party, Pule’s past transgressions scream louder than her leadership efforts after her firing from Cabinet.
It is not so much about the country refusing to forgive and forget, but more about citizens asking the president if he thinks that is the best possible candidate for the position in a country of 60 million citizens.
It is sad that the president finds himself in the corner that he has painted himself into because his setting up of the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into the police is going so well that it would, on its own, have become such a redeeming act for his legacy.
But the collective leadership and responsibility mandate of his party requires that he acts in a manner that is not rational by appointing someone clearly unsuitable for the role of a minister.