President Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed the Democratic Alliance’s Solly Malatsi as Communications and Digital Technologies Minister as the Government of National Unity’s Cabinet is formed.
He becomes the department’s seventeenth Minister since 1994, and its fifth since 2018.
Malatsi succeeds the ANC’s Mondli Gungubele, who was appointed as Communications and Digital Technologies Deputy Minister.
The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies in its current form was established in 2019 following a 2018 mandate by Ramaphosa to merge the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services, led by Siyabonga Cwele, and the Department of Communications, which was led by Nomvula Mokonyane.
On August 5, 2021, Ramaphosa appointed Khumbudzo Ntshavheni as Communications and Digital Technologies Minister during a Cabinet reshuffle, replacing Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, who had served in the position since late 2018.
Less than two years later, on March 6, 2023, Ramaphosa appointed Gungubele, who held the position of Minister in the Presidency since August 2021, as Communications and Digital Technologies Minister during further changes made to South Africa’s Cabinet.