7 days ago
South Africa's Ramaphosa Axes Education Minister
Live on Bloomberg TV
CC-Transcript
00:00So another government shake up. Just give us the backdrop to what led to the firing of the Education Minister, I mean, many analysts that we've been speaking to are saying that this is a sign that a coalition government is working in action, as you were mentioning. Yes. This is the second government shakeup that we've seen in the past few weeks by President Ramaphosa. The significance here, though, is that what we were seeing from opposition parties within this coalition government is that they were threatening to hold up any sort of budgetary movement and approval of budgets moving forward if they in their words, if they don't see the removal of some parliament parliamentary members who they deem as corrupt and compromise removed. And so, yes, that is what we saw earlier this week from President Ramaphosa, the Education Minister. She faced allegations of corruption and potentially accusations that she misled Parliament. Now, with her removal, we haven't really heard from the ANC or from President Ramaphosa why exactly she was removed. But we are hearing from opposition coalition members who are saying that they are pleased with this and now they can move forward with the next steps of approval, but saying at the same time in the same breath that they're not going to stop going after other officials who they deem within the ANC party as being, in their words, compromised. And as you were mentioning, yes, this opens the door to budgetary approval later today. We were waiting for the appropriations bill. Really, it's the final nail in the coffin of this budget impasse that we've been seeing over the past few months is finally going to get a vote later today, hopefully then easing tensions within the coalition government, potentially. Then for investors, it's giving them a bit of relief that, yes, the coalition government is working and potentially there is more accountability that we are seeing within the government. The ANC, though, again, for their part, are saying that the removal of the education minister has nothing to do with the DA and some of the threats that they heard there. But you do have to wonder whether or not investor sentiment and really this hold up of this budget that we've been waiting for for the past five months had anything to do with at least the removal of the education minister and moving things forward here.
