Clashes over Cabinet overlaps?
2009-06-18 15:08
Cape Town – The creation of new ministries and the amalgamation of others in the new Cabinet seems set to create a series of turf wars, as departments start to carve out their own areas of responsibility, and sometimes overlap with their colleagues' patches.
Buyelwa Sonjica for example finds herself possibly in rivalry with Tina Joemat-Petersen and maybe with Trevor Manuel as well.
As Minister for the Environment, Sonjica introduced her budget vote to Parliament on Thursday and devoted a good deal of time to discussing the problem of overfishing. Declining fish stocks, she said, pose a huge challenge to fisheries management.
"It requires innovative management strategies if we want to ensure the sustainability of our marine living resources. A government wide intervention is required to address coastal poverty and alternative livelihood opportunities in light of declining fish stocks."
Responsibilities
Sonjica also discussed a fishing capacity management regime, related to the hake industry, and spoke about the fishing rights that attach to tuna and swordfish.
No doubt this is rightly attached to the environment department, but Joemat Petersen's Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry department might also feel it has some responsibilities in this area.
After all the mining of coastal dunes also has a serious environmental impact, but no one is suggesting that this area of minerals and energy should be transferred to the environment department.
Sonjica brushed the problem aside, saying that she and Joemat Petersen come from the same stable and have similar ideas on the subject, so she was confident that there would be no clash.
She also brushed aside the suggestion that any baggage from her previous post (as Minerals and Energy Minister) could be carried over to environment. She did not see any potential conflict between what she did at that department and what she will have to adjudicate in her present responsibilities.
Conflict of interest
Where she did see a potential conflict of interest she told a media briefing was if she would be called to adjudicate an appeal over an environmental impact assessment to do with her other current responsibilities – Water Affairs.
She explained that a section of the Constitution that allowed the president to name an interim minister could be used to solve that conflict.
She was asked about a statement by Manuel, the head of the National Planning Commission, who said last week that he would take charge of long-term planning on climate change.
Not likely, said Sonjica.
She insisted that she has been given the job of leading the government's approach to climate change, and has been doing so ever since she took office, travelling to Nairobi and elsewhere to establish Africa's position at the climate change summit in Copenhagen at the end of this year.