President Cyril Ramaphosa seems to be suffering from a bad case of decision paralysis.
The same diagnosis could be used to characterise most of his presidency thus far, if one were to do a pure "plan vs action" analysis.
But in this current period, there appears to a heightened level of suspense, tension and expectation as the nation awaits a response from the presidency on a range of issues.
It's been three weeks since the State of the Nation Address, wherein Ramaphosa declared a National State of Disaster to "urgently" tackle the electricity crisis that has necessitated load shedding every day of 2023 thus far.
One of the key features of government's response was the creation of a minister of electricity position in the presidency.
That was February 9 and no appointment has been made yet. Even the rumours and speculation about potential candidates have gone quiet.
Indeed there seems to be general procrastination around the executive. South Africans have been expecting the announcement of a cabinet reshuffle since the conclusion of the ANC national elective conference in December.
What we can predict with a reasonable amount of certainty is that new ANC deputy president Paul Mashatile will be in that cabinet, the deputy position officially becoming available when incumbent David Mabuza resigned earlier this week.
Then the vacant position of minister of public service and administration needs to be filled. The president must also name a new transport minister after Fikile Mbalula was appointed to the full-time position of ANC secretary-general.
"Any day now," senior government officials keep repeating. Ramaphosa is likely distracted by other matters that have required urgent attention.
This week the Constitutional Court dismissed his bid to challenge Parliament’s report into the Phala Phala scandal, which found he had a case to answer for. This would have opened a not-so-old wound.
Then there was former Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter's televised allegations that at least one of Ramaphosa's cabinet members enabled wholesale corruption at the power utility.
Ramaphosa’s glib reaction was to urge De Ruyter to report his allegations to the authorities, with supporting evidence.
De Ruyter, who is legally obliged to report criminality at Eskom, seems to be suffering from a similar paralysis, as he has not yet gone to the police within the specified seven-day period.
* Taariq Halim, Editor of the Cape Argus newspaper.
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