Durban - On Wednesday evening, President Cyril Ramaphosa, announced his 28 member cabinet for the 6th administration and it included fairly new figures from across the country.
Among them is Ronald Lamola and Patricia De Lille.
Here is a brief background of the new ministers and deputy ministers who constitutionally, are not members of the Cabinet.
Ronald Lamola
Minister for Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola. Picture: Tracey Adams/African News Agency/ANA
Lamola, who is the new minister for Justice and Correctional Services, hails from Komatipoort and later Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga province.
It was where he went Mchaka High School and matriculated in 2000. In 2005 he obtained an LLB from the University of Venda and he would later add more law qualifications through Unisa where, in 2006, he did Practical Legal Training that would later lead to obtaining a Certificate in Corporate Law from the same institution.
After years of studies, he now holds an LLM (Masters) in Extractive Law. He once worked for the Competition Commission before joining Ndobela Lamola law firm in Gauteng as a partner.
He shot to fame when he served in the ANC youth league with Julius Malema in the structure that was later disbanded in 2013. At party level, he is currently a National Executive Committee (NEC) member of the ANC.
Politically, he will be remembered for staging his one man pickets outside venues where the ANC’s NEC was holding meetings, calling for former president Jacob Zuma to resign when his scandals took a toll on the party.
Patricia de Lille
GOOD party leader and Minister for Public Works and Infrastructure Development Patricia de Lille. Picture: Phando Jikelo/African News Agency(ANA)
De Lille, who is the new Minister for Public Works and Infrastructure Development, is a political nomad who has refused to allow political circumstances to force out of politics and community service - her first love.
During the struggle years, De Lille was a member of the once towering Pan Africanist Congress (PAC).
In 2003, using the floor crossing law that allowed members of the National Assembly and legislatures to cross or leave their parties without losing their parliamentary seats, De Lille took some seats of the party and started the now defunct Independent Democrats (ID).
The party had a strong presence in the Western and Northern Cape provinces where there are large Coloured and Khoisan communities.
In 2010, De Lille announced that her party had agreed to merge with DA and three years later, the party ceased to exist and was swallowed by the latter.
In return for forming an alliance with the DA, she was given a provincial cabinet position as Western Cape MEC for Social Development (2010 to 2011) and later from 2011 to 2018, as a member of the DA, she became the mayor of Cape Town.
It was not long before she was accused by the party of corruption and was asked to resign; but she refuted the allegations and refused to resign.
Constant pressure that saw once saying she “was abused by the DA” made her to relent and she left her position in October 2018.
In December that year she formed the GOOD party which later obtained two seats at the National Assembly after the May 8 elections.
Khumbudzo Ntshavheni
Minister for Small Business Development Khumbudzo Ntshavheni. Picture: Zwelethemba Kostile/Parliament of RSA
The new minister for Small Business Development is an academically decorated figure.
According to a profile kept online by Bloomberg business portal, Ntshavheni was once a Chief Operating Officer at the State Information Technology Agency (SITA).
Politically, Ntshavheni who holds a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) was between 2015 and 2018, the spokesperson of the ANC in Limpopo.
Her own Facebook profile (data not cross checked by Independent Media) states that she is a former Municipal Manager at Ba-Phalaborwa Municipality, former Spokesperson of the Premier at Office Of The Premier, former Lecturer at Unisa and she hails from Sibasa in Limpopo.
Thoko Didiza
Thoko Didiza Picture: Herbert Matimba/African News Agency (ANA)
Though not fairly new in Cabinet politics, the Durban-born politician was once a Thabo Mbeki loyalist so much that in 2008 when Mbeki was kicked out of the country’s Presidency by the ANC, she, together with some ministers of the era, resigned in solidarity with him.
After years in the wilderness, she allegedly went to Nkandla to apologise to former President Jacob Zuma and she was brought back into the ANC fold.
However, plans to make her the ANC’s mayoral candidate of Tshwane in 2016 backfired spectacularly when her own party members rejected her and engaged in violent riots that was punctuated with tribal undertones, telling her she must return to KZN because she is Zulu.
New Deputy Ministers
Ramaphosa also brought in new deputy ministers. Among them is former Cosatu President, Sdumo Dlamini, former Johannesburg mayor, Parks Tau, Boitumelo Moloi, former Limpopo MEC, David Masondo, Njabulo Nzuza of ANC youth league, Bavelile Hlongwa, Thembi Siweya, Rosemary Capa, Nomafu Cawe, Zizi Kodwa, Fish Mahlalela, Nomalungelo Gina and Dikeledi Magadzi.