From Ramaforia to RamaFailure
The election of President Cyril Ramaphosa as state president in early 2018 brought psychological relief to a country battered by nearly 10 years of abuse of state capture by Jacob Zuma.
Zuma brought us to the edge and Ramaphosa promised to push us back. Not surprisingly, Ramaphosa experienced unprecedented support from South Africans across all voting lines. Until recently, he was still much more popular with South Africans than the ANC. He remains the most popular politician in the country.
South Africa was ready for a strong “good boy” who would put all our wrongs right.
Of course, this was never a realistic (or fair) expectation, and Covid-19 meant that Ramaphosa’s legacy would be broadly defined by the way he handled a health crisis.
The Phala Phala scandal has forced a premature assessment of Ramaphosa’s tenure, with the security of his tenure still very much at stake. At the time of writing, it seemed likely that Ramaphosa would survive a vote to have his impeachment proceedings instituted in Parliament. But this ANC vote to support their president as they did with Zuma and the Nkandla scandal has nothing to do with principle and everything to do with political survival.
A fair assessment of Ramaphosa’s presidency, minus Phala Phala, would probably approve. His handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, apart from fair criticism of some lockdown regulations, was exemplary. Compared to how other nations fought to impose mask-wearing measures, Ramaphosa and the South Africans were a shining light in the fight to return to a normal way of life.
His appointments at Eskom, the National Prosecutor’s Office and SARS helped those institutions crack down on corruption and state capture. His support for the Zondo Commission, despite his poor performance in defending the ANC, was instrumental in exposing a decade of looting.
But, as author and researcher Jacques Pauw argues in his brilliant essay to run Friday Briefing today, the Phala Phala scandal threatens to overshadow everything good about Ramaphosa’s tenure and highlights his continuing weaknesses, inherited from Zuma. The best thing about it is his failure to fix the police and reduce the country’s obscene crime rate.
“I am not sure that Ramaphosa still has the moral authority to demand our support. He has been wrong, and he has done it spectacularly,” Pauw, author of The President’s Guardians and the recently released sequel our poisoned land write in this must-read piece.
It’s a sentiment shared by the leader of the African Transformation Movement, Vuyo Zungula. He writes that Ramaphosa’s decision to seek a review of the section 89 report is a clear attempt to intimidate and deter other institutions that may rule against it.
Chief District Attorney John Steenhuisen writes that the Section 89 report on Phala Phala did not find Ramaphosa definitively guilty, but recommended setting up an impeachment inquiry. Steenhuisen therefore argues that the committee should not be blocked, but instead allowed the space to conclusively establish what happened at Phala Phala.
Meanwhile, ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba writes that South Africans should not be swayed by internal ANC factionalism, but look to a post-ANC government future. Because, Mashaba writes, “South Africa and the ANC cannot coexist in mutual prosperity.”
Finally, former Gauteng Premier and News24 columnist Mbhazima Shilowa weighs in, arguing that whatever the outcome of this month’s ANC elective conference, or whatever the Constitutional Court decides regarding his request for review of the section 89 panel, Ramaphosa is a dead man. Walking man
Enjoy the readings.
Better,
adriaan basson
Chief editor
Cyril Ramaphosa is another president who does not want to be held accountable
What Cyril Ramaphosa should have done last week was resign and wait for impeachment to mount a defense. Instead, he clings to power and instructs ANC MPs to toe the party line and vote against the Section 89 report, even after the Constitutional Court confirmed that members must vote according to their conscience, he writes. ATM President. Wow Zungula.
South Africans must come to learn that our redemption lies outside the ANC and not within it. We can no longer be held hostage by the ANC, forced to conceive of life in terms of ANC leaders, conferences, investigations and succession, writes ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba.
Whatever the outcome of the ANC conference, or Cyril Ramaphosa’s request for review in the Constitutional Court, the writing is on the wall. He is a walking dead, he argues Mbhazima Shilowa.
