RAMAPHOSA’S ‘BIG TALK’ FAILS TO CALM ANC’S STORMY WATERS

THE ANC’S 2022 elective conference provides the party with an opportunity to renew itself and adapt to new challenges. Whether the leadership is re-elected will depend on how it has carried out the mandate given in 2017.

The prospect of President Cyril Ramaphosa being re-elected will depend on his performance.

In a functioning democracy, where leaders are held to account, President Ramaphosa would not think of availing himself for a second term. If anything, he would be working on how to salvage whatever modicum of respect he still commands. The hype that accompanied his election disappeared from the get-go. All that is left is big talk. He has lost all credibility and believability.

In a lead-up meeting to the ANC’S 110th anniversary, traditional leaders boldly told Ramaphosa to his face that he was a liar.

The perception that his promises are worth nothing also came out in the subsequent interviews he entertained.

Two years earlier, Barney Mthombothi foresaw the development in his column “Cyril Ramaphosa’s multiplying falsehoods are hurting his cause” (Sunday Times, January 13, 2020).

Ramaphosa does not need anyone to discredit him. He has mastered the art of doing so himself. He can bemoan the fact that members look the other way when acts of indiscipline happen, but proceed to be guilty of the same.

A case in point was a glaring abuse of platform by Stanley Mathabatha, the provincial chairperson of the ANC in Limpopo, at the party’s rally. Mathabatha turned his welcome address into a campaign speech for the re-election of Ramaphosa, who pretended not to notice the flagrantly divisive act.

A disciplined leader would have pointed out to Mathabatha that that was neither the platform nor the occasion to do so. He failed.

As if to lecture Ramaphosa, Tony Yengeni responded on Twitter: “January 8 is a sacrosanct ANC birthday. A day when members not only celebrate but chart the way forward… For the first time it’s been defecated upon by senior ANC officials to launch their factional and personal 2022 campaigns.

This political travesty must be condemned... Loudly.”

Through his silence, Ramaphosa sent the wrong message – that ill-discipline was acceptable only when it favoured his political fortune.

With regard to the government, Ramaphosa’s performance leaves much to be desired. Dreams and promises of a better and functioning government have since turned into nightmares.

Business confidence plummeted to its lowest level yet during the second quarter of 2020. This was the lowest since the RMB/BER business confidence index began in 1975. State-owned enterprises have all but collapsed. The lackadaisical performance of the economy cannot be blamed solely on Covid-19. The economy was on a downward spiral long before its onset on our shores.

Business Day, a daily newspaper sympathetic to Ramaphosa, noted in its editorial (March 4, 2019): “Economic growth in 2018 came in at a paltry 0.7%. Not only is this far from the levels of about 5% that are needed to make inroads into the country’s unemployment crisis, but it is also only just more than half the rate achieved during Zuma’s last year in office, when the economy expanded 1.3%.”

Mcebisi Jonas (Sunday Times, July 19, 2020), an economic envoy appointed by Ramaphosa, argued that instead of turning the economic fortunes around, the country had been “presented with a multitude of plans, but little sense that anyone is in charge. Debates are often stuck between competing ideological positions rather than developing and driving real productivity and providing jobs”.

And in her article, “Ramaphosa and Gordhan fail on every energy promise as load shedding grips SA” (Daily Maverick, July 14), Ferial Haffajee reminds us that Ramaphosa was entrusted with turning around the fortunes of Eskom as far back as 2014.

Instead of focusing on getting the economy on a positive trajectory, the Ramaphosa administration continued to invest more time and energy on its internal battles. No amount of spin doctoring would erase Ramaphosa’s dismal failure on the economic front.

But before one jumps the gun, too much has been invested in Ramaphosa to allow him to throw in the towel. Ramaphosa is assured of escaping accountability. No politician has had it so good. Veteran journalist Justice Malala forcefully argues that there is “No accountability in the Ramaphosa administration” (Sunday Times, January 10, 2021).

Malala writes: “It must really be nice to be in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration. Imagine we were back in the year, say 2016, and a virus had come along and killed thousands of South Africans. Imagine the revelation that 29 other countries had begun inoculating their populations, SA had not concluded any agreements for direct supply with pharmaceutical companies… Jacob Zuma, who was president at the time, would have been eaten alive.

“Not so in the age of Ramaphosa. This administration, after a spectacular shambles in the handling of the vaccine rollout and clear lack of strategy, is continuing in its opaque ways, with little or no noise from most quarters. There is no accountability, no taking responsibility and no consequence.”

Where does this leave the ANC? Flogging a horse that can’t run is to gamble with the future. The only trump card remaining for Ramaphosa would be an attempt to use the report by Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo to muzzle his political opponents. But this will not work. And besides, it takes time to conclude criminal investigations, let alone win them. Abuse of state power is something that members of the ANC will be watching with a hawk eye.

Supra Mahumapelo, Zweli Mkhize and Lindiwe Sisulu have been punted as the core that can replace the current leadership. Ace Magashule, Mathew Phosa, Mkhize and Mahumapelo are former leaders of the provincial government.

Phosa, Magashule and Mkhize were in the top six of the ANC. Under the ANC, the party was saved from the embarrassing spectre of being unable to pay its own workers. As Phosa explained during an interview at the ANC rally, under his watch not only were workers paid on time, they received 7% salary increases and bonuses.

It boils down to ensuring that the ANC restores confidence it lost among its stakeholders and the ordinary people. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma is certainly a formidable competitor. She lost by a whisker to Ramaphosa, who has been accused of buying his presidency.

Indeed, Ramaphosa is the only person who can have money raised on his behalf, benefit from it, ask the courts to put a lid on the information related to the money, and then proceed to plead ignorance and innocence.

The Ramaphosa camp ran a sexist campaign against Dlamini Zuma, by deliberately linking her to her former husband, Jacob Zuma. Doing so was to ensure that she paid for the sins of commission or omission by the former president.

In criticising Sisulu, ANC veteran Mavuso Msimang has done a good advertising job for those who might not know her. Mavuso writes that Sisulu “has been a member of Parliament since 1994.

A long-standing member of the ANC national executive committee, Sisulu started in the government as deputy minister of Home Affairs, following which she successively served as minister of Intelligence; Defence; Public Service and Administration; Human Settlements; International Relations and Cooperation; Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation; and now, Tourism.”

Replacing Ramaphosa is not going to be easy. A lot of money has been invested in him. Some of the investors are those who can’t wait to see the downfall of the ANC. This is why they don’t give a damn whether ANC office workers are paid. Those challenging Ramaphosa must ensure that the votes are not split. This is the only hope for Ramaphosa’s camp.

If the onslaught on Sisulu is anything to go by, we should brace for the worst. Sisulu ruffled feathers when she dared suggest that the post-1994 dispensation has failed most of our people who remain trapped in squalor.

The response was swift and vicious. Beneficiaries of the status quo would not take this lying down. Mere observations have been turned into a crisis of democracy. The message sent is crystal clear: “Though shall not speak out of turn.”

The fact remains. Despite its best Constitution, South Africa is the global poster child of inequality 28 years into our democracy. As we brace ourselves for the titanic battle for the soul of the ANC, we may do better by taking counsel from the late American President JF Kennedy to heart.

Kennedy warned that “those that make peaceful evolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”.

This is the core message Sisulu’s detractors should focus on.

Replacing Ramaphosa is not going to be easy. A lot of money has been invested in him. Some of the investors are those who can’t wait to see the downfall of the ANC. Sipho Seepe