Ramaphosa unveils a new Cabinet

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa reshuffled his cabinet after the Democratic Alliance, the second-biggest party in the governing coalition, requested personnel changes to ministries it had been assigned.

The changes will affect six ministries, including agriculture, forestry and trade, the presidency said in a statement on Tuesday. The revamp comes before local government elections on 4 November. 

Willie Aucamp, previously the forestry, fisheries and environment minister, was assigned the agriculture portfolio. He succeeds John Steenhuisen, who was named deputy minister of trade, industry and competition in place of Alexandra Abrahams.

David Maynier, who oversaw education in the Western Cape province, will take over Aucamp’s portfolio, while Abrahams becomes deputy electricity minister.

Lawmaker Yusuf Cassim was named deputy higher education minister, and Jack Bloom, who served as a legislator in the central Gauteng province, was appointed as deputy water and sanitation minister.

Steenhuisen was demoted two months after he was replaced by Geordin Hill-Lewis as leader of the DA, one of the 10 parties in the so-called government of national unity formed after Ramaphosa’s African National Congress lost its parliamentary majority in 2024 elections. 

“We are trying to build a party that is capable of winning a national election,” Hill-Lewis told the Cape Town Press Club on 24 June.

“If we are going to win the confidence of many millions of South Africans who have not yet voted for us in the past, we have to show them that we are going to be unmistakably, unashamedly, radically different from that which we are trying to replace.”

“Part of that difference is showing that we are not going to avert our gaze from doing difficult things just because they are difficult.” 

In addition, Ramaphosa also named Dina Pule as the social development minister. The latter post has stood vacant since Sisisi Tolashe was fired on May 14 after becoming embroiled in a succession of scandals. 

The Democratic Alliance criticised the appointment of Pule, who previously served as the nation’s communications minister before being dismissed in 2013 amid allegations of corruption.

She was later suspended and fined by parliament after an investigation found she had misused public funds.

“The DA believes that the social development is so crucial a portfolio, with such a significant budget, that it demands a minister of impeccable credentials — not one found to have previously betrayed her oath of office and to have brought parliament into disrepute,” the party said in a statement.