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The Democratic Alliance (DA) is today calling on President Zuma to make the objectives of the performance agreements that he signed with ministers public. President Zuma justified his reshuffle in terms of service delivery and claimed that he was getting rid of ministers who had not performed in their respective ministries.

We urge the President to go one step further and to truly demonstrate his commitment to service delivery by making the objectives of the performance agreements public. Without this information, the ability of the electorate to know that ministers are truly held to account for not delivering on their mandates instead of on the political capital they provide, is severely impaired. In order for there to be true transparency and openness with the public, the public need to know to what criteria their ministers are being asked to deliver upon.

One of the cabinet ministers, Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande, yesterday discussed some of the key targets and outcomes for his ministry. These are the kind of details that have not been forthcoming from other cabinet ministers.

We welcome this move towards transparency from Minister Nzimande and encourage other ministers and indeed the President himself to release the details of their objectives and make them public. I shall be asking the President today whether he will be following Minister Nzimande's example and making his own performance objectives public and whether he will be encouraging his other ministers to do so in the interests of public transparency.

The presidency stated earlier this year, in response to a DA question, that such objectives would be revealed at the discretion of the ministers. A copy of the reply follows below.

This past Sunday, the President said:

We have completed the process of the reconfiguration of government, and that of putting in place systems that will help us change the way government works in order to improve service delivery. During this period, we also had time to study the functioning of the current administration in order to ascertain what works and what needs to be changed or strengthened.

The DA believes that a real commitment to service delivery requires complete transparency. The disclosure of performance objectives should not be discretionary, but mandatory. Minister Nzimande is, at the moment, leading the charge. We urge President Zuma, and Minister Nzimande's cabinet colleagues, to truly ‘change the way government works' and be open and accountable to all.