By: Clyde Ramalaine
Elmer E. Cornwell Jr asserts, “A president’s relations with the press though based on interdependence rarely involves cordial cooperation. Rather they tend to go through ‘phases’ and ‘seasons’ related to the more readily measured phases through which general presidential popularity passes during an administration.”
Listening to Cornwell, one is compelled to ask why the press in South Africa hitherto has remained so loyal and useful for the agenda of Ramaphosa, the politician?
When is he experiencing the moment of scrutiny led by the sector that sees itself as watchdogs against wrong? A section of the media that so meticulously knows how to go after his predecessor?
To appreciate the relationship between Ramaphosa, the political actor, and a combination of some in the media, the DA as the official opposition and some high-heeled Foundations, we must hear Digital Editor Jack Houghton. On the recent Biden-led USA withdrawal from Afghanistan and the subsequent events, he writes, “US President Joe Biden has been babied and bubble-wrapped by the media since taking office, and that has made him soft, unaccountable and vulnerable to manipulation from the likes of hardened Taliban soldiers.”
For a moment, I involuntarily thought Houghton was describing our South African situation. Like Biden, Ramaphosa, since his advent as caretaker president in February 2018, is babied, coddled and bubble-wrapped by a combination of role players led by the media. Ramaphosa and the media attest more than snug, mutually beneficial relationship. His predecessor is almost four years out of office yet remains hounded down.
The combination of media, DA and a selection of factional Foundations remain obsessed and pungent in their condemnation of Jacob Zuma as its primary focus. In a one-dimensional sense, investigative journalists are naturally concerned and stuck with Zuma when they have exhibited no energy to engage the incumbent for any of his plethora of failures over the last four years.
South Africans await when the media, the official opposition, Democratic Alliance, and the high-heeled Foundations keep Ramaphosa accountable for his role in what he deems nine wasted years and his presidential years. South Africa, with bated breath, awaits the honest engagement of the serving president on his actions, inactions, gross failures, known deception, pathology of lies, and utter lack of personally owning up in failed leadership.
Ramaphosa appears a president wholly obsessed with serving a second term regardless of what costs in both literal and figurative senses. His CR17 campaign needed R1,3-bn to secure him a marginal victory of 179 votes.
His current CR22 campaign is bandied around in some circles to be aiming for a budget of R2,5 – R3 bn. The CR22 campaign officially started with his most recent cabinet reshuffling. We all by now know this reshuffling had nothing to do with improving governance, increase service delivery or a more effective means of utilizing skills afforded in cabinet setting.
The cabinet reshuffle, which details a carrot-and-stick approach, was to subdue those with political aspirations of challenging him to the ANC high office.
The singular and central objective of his rise and sleep is a second term. The game plan to serve a second term of ANC and SA presidencies increasingly reveals him seeking an ANC election unopposed. An unopposed election means an election where all potential rivals and nominees in democratic ANC elections are either annihilated through a variety of tactically orchestrated means. His alliance partners lend a useful hand. His tactics include frustrating ANC political programmes by abusing COVID 19 as an excuse to ensure political formation.
An essential ingredient in the ANC constitution is crippled and buying him much needed time. A second means is the demonizing of some as corrupt, hence charging and prosecuting by the NPA.
But every game plan must have helpful role players. Role players may either assume an active or a passive role. They may even fulfil strategic roles in agreement with a particular agenda. In this instance, we may identify the more significant part of SA media as a strategic alliance partner, the DA as official opposition is also a partner. Others include the earlier cited Foundations and some in the judiciary.
Ramaphosa thus has no short supply on that since he has the powerful media and the official opposition on his side. Seldom has any president enjoyed such expedient relations with the press. Strangely he as president is defended by the DA. He has a trusted partner in the SA media that has been exceptionally unforgiving and wholly absent in probing him, be it on his organization or his executive.
The media readily and easily take comfort to question his deputy David Mabuza and all other ANC politicians but consistently exonerates him of any accountability. For nine years now, the media and all loudmouth Foundations have failed to hold Ramaphosa accountable for his role in the tragedy of a Marikana massacre.
He has been allowed to get away with flimsy explanations as to why he had not yet visited Marikana. In a more recent practice, he is usually out of the country on Marikana day. This year he was in Malawi. Just anywhere but not Marikana where the tears of the victims and their loved one’s howls on Die Koppie.
The list of Ramaphosa exonerations by the strategic alliance partners of media, opposition parties and the chameleon foundations are endless. Classic examples include his most recent response to Parliament. Let us hear him in his own words: “It’s very complex, it’s very emotional and needs to be dealt with sensitivity. These are the issues at play. They are not easy. There are so many; I live in the hope that answers will be found, even beyond just the socio-economic issues. ”
Ramaphosa dares to play with words in saying nothing on this cardinal issue; his beloved media has nothing to challenge him on.
When the ANC flaunts every labour rule in not honouring paying its staff their deserving salaries while deducting PAYE, medical aid, provident fund and UIF contributions reactively, the media does not hold the ANC president accountable but strangely exonerates him.
He is absent in having to explain the dysfunctional status of the ANC. Somehow a distinction is drawn between him and the ANC he leads.
The recent ANC failure to field candidates in over 36 municipalities is the clearest sign of a dysfunctional organization, again does not remotely bring Ramaphosa as the president into the space of accountability. He always escapes responsibility.
The media expands no energy to engage the non-transparency of the president who has his 2017 campaign funders in identity sealed as court attained. It does not see the need to ask why Ramaphosa cannot avail the records of financial contributions he received.
He is not held accountable in the interest of transparency and confirms that Ramaphosa pays mere lip service to his much-publicized fight against corruption.
The DA, as official opposition, sees no need to call the president to account for his sealed records.
Ramaphosa’s appearance before the Zondo Commission showed a president highly suspect and active in deflection and obfuscation. He could not explain why some questionable characters closely connected with him continue to enjoy a seat in the cabinet.
It saw him effectively disowning and engaging in culpable deception when he claims an absence of records on deployment committee meetings. As deputy president of ANC and having chaired the deployment committee, he is given a free pass. Ramaphosa is not held accountable for the billions that went missing under his leadership. One would expect the media to challenge Ramaphosa’s choice for specific suspicious names in his cabinet when he claims to lead a fight against corruption and yet has appointed questionable members such as Enoch Godongwana, Zizi Kodwa, David Mahlobo, Thabang Makwetla, to name a few.
While conspicuously absent in scrutinizing Ramaphosa, this same media registers a handy instrument and weapon to deal with his political nemesis in this instance, Lindiwe Sisulu.
Cognizant that between him and a second term stands a woman, he is resorting to dirty campaigning by employing anything to his disposal to deal with her.
How sustainable is this bubble wrapping of Ramaphosa since increasingly the judiciary comes under scrutiny for being captured from its apex court to engage in proxy political wars?
Ramaphosa’s quest for a second term has become the de facto totality of ANC programmes in daily manifestation. Everything appears sacrificed to this narrow end. If this is restricted to the ANC, one may excuse him. What are the chances that the factional interest of a CR22 campaign also interferes with the executive governance as a non-negotiable and basic principle? Is it possible that cabinet members are trapped in factional silo interests where some cabinet members are engaged in proxy wars at the expense of a functional government? Within the context of a cabinet reshuffle, it is incumbent on those who exit the office to do a handover. The question that remains, when Senzo Mchunu took office as the new minister of Water and Sanitation, was this principle of hand over from his predecessor observed? Instead, he heard he determined to seek legal advice on corruption probes that evidence finalized reports. Ramaphosa’s investigative journalists ask no questions as to why the first task of Mchunu in his new office was the disbanding of the Panel that was instrumental in preparing the corruption cases against officials.
They do not ask him for his plan to take the Panel’s work forward and bring those to book regardless of their association with the CR22 campaign.
What then is Sisulu’s sin? Sisulu’s sin is her willingness to challenge him when nominated. In this context, as afforded in the ANC constitution, one’s willingness to accept a nomination for candidacy renders one an immediate threat and a natural enemy that must be dealt with. His strategic alliance partners made up of the DA and media is neatly released as a pack of savage wolves as Sisulu is experiencing with the ongoing negative presence in the media setting.
The silence of the loudmouth Foundations, who only knows how to be loud on a particular type of corruption, has no moral conscience to celebrate and defend the sterling work Sisulu has done and was interrupted to continue doing. Nobody is asking why, out of all ministers, Sisulu is singled out for virulent media attacks and vicious claims that have no substance.
The script is straightforward, find anything against Sisulu and makes it stick. Find something that can see her forced to step aside than CR22’s way to a second term is precise.
Instead, Sisulu, the true corruption buster, is accused of corruption. Sisulu, the political Babita Deokaran, the whistleblower, becomes the casualty of high level and higher connected corruption. Yet Sisulu’s resolve is what Ramaphosa finds intimidating. He knows she represents the light everything his CR22 campaign in the darkness of a brothel represents.
It is a given that Lindiwe Sisulu’s candidacy, regardless of when announced, is inevitable and poses more than a threat to the CR22 game plan.
For this reason, she is targeted and may even be charged, all in the hope of sidelining her from contesting because Ramaphosa daydreams of an unopposed December 2022 ANC election. We must wait to see if the NPA in predictability will be unleashed on Sisulu. Until then, the toxic relationship of a man, his agenda, his strategic partners in the crime of demonizing the corruption whistleblower in Water and Sanitation will continue. His strategic partners are immanent in media and a DA opposition continue to exonerate him while going after everyone else who poses a threat.
*Clyde Ramalaine, ANG Political Analyst
