Ramaphosa, a leadership suspended in a crisis of legitimacy and shrouded in distrust

By: Clyde Ramalaine

South Africa deserves honest, transparent, innovative, and decisive leadership, not a pervasive self-serving second-termism. Permit me to unpack my prism of a construct I recently framed. With second-termism I mean the contemporary emerging phenomenon in an ANC majority-party-led state that manifests across party and state governance foundations. Its manifestations are best understood in a fervent obsession that seeks to supplant all political formation, organising, programming and ultimately governance with a self-serving need to extend the incumbent a second term of political office.

Second-termism then from its party context translates to the paralysis of statecraft and obfuscation of functions that define essential dimensions of service delivery. It at root attests to a party/organisation captured by factionalism and its multiplicity of contradictions for a fundamental re-purpose of existence. It renders the state in at least two spheres [executive and legislative] but not limited, subservient to the political machinations. The ultimate result attests to an increasingly dysfunctional and over time paralyzed state necessarily carceral to the ambitions of a particular agenda. If corruption violently curtails the capacity of the state to function in the meaningful delivery of basic amenities to its most vulnerable, therefore, constituting a crime against society, then second termism I shall postulate for its toxic and devastating impact it may be argued translates to a crime against democracy and society by extension.

Israelmore Ayivor reminds us, “You don’t necessarily need atomic bombs to destroy a nation. Politicians who value their pockets than the life of citizens always do that every day.”

In a recent opinion piece, public intellectual and political science academic Piet Croucamp bemoans the fact that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s voice is losing its impact, traction, and momentum since few of the latter’s promises have become a reality. He then asks a question, is he mortally wounded? Croucamp’s frame of mind suggests that Cyril, on the back of a Nelson Mandela heroism, presented hope for change, given, as he puts it, what  Jacob Zuma came to present.  Many in the self-identified white identity group, romanticise Mandela, often at the expense of the ANC organisation that produced him, sought to cloak Ramaphosa as the second coming of Mandela. Less for any justified existential reasons but from the bedrock of white interest and its group survival.

In contrast, Croucamp attempts to justify a Ramaphosa presidency in the hope of expectation at the hand of two myths, the Mandela dream, and the Zuma nightmare. These two are the anti-poles, the good and evil, demons and angels’ narrative that has come to define a South African discourse makes up his framing for a presentation of Ramaphosa’s Presidency. We are, however, still not clear as to the content for this hope as embodied in Ramaphosa, which means, on what was this hope of a Ramaphosa presidency anchored for those who felt him a Messiah? We must still know from Croucamp et al from where this natural hope in Ramaphosa originates.

Perhaps the mythology of Ramaphosa messiahship is borne from a combination of less engaged yet easily bandied around beliefs and mistruths. These include an educated man, a legal brain, successful businessperson, capitalist-billionaire, and a historic organised labour role immanent in leading the biggest strike in 1986. Other reasons for a belief in the persona and mythology of Ramaphosa’s messiahship rests in his meteoric rise to the head of the ANC negotiations at the table of the political elite. Yet for some, his participation in the drafting of the first democratic constitution and ultimately the Secretary-General position of the ANC defines him in hope.  Perhaps the final reason which details a CR 17 campaign of morality deceived many is that in Ramaphosa, we have a natural angel of light that would dispel the darkness of an ANC leadership crisis.  Nevertheless, those who declared him the hope for a future omits to talk about how useful they saw him for a particular agenda that centralises globalised white interest and local white dominance, in particular the economic spheres of SA. He would be white interest and privilege’s insurance policy against the threat of black domination.

They never had the time or made time to ask how effective and functional in delivery of output his presidency would be for the masses who remain shackled by the chains of unemployment, manacled by inequality, and incarcerated in a life sentence of poverty. In the ANC setting, he was made by some such as his NUM successor who in this epoch attests the CR22 Enforcer-in-Chief, Mantashe. Mantashe’s justification of how Ramaphosa, a billionaire, is incapable of stealing from the poor pretended to be rational. This bullish though nonsensical and ahistorical, thoughtless utterance entered the SA discourse. Equally so Pravin Gordhan while signing the Jaques Pauw book [which we still do not know who wrote between the two of them] tell South Africans to vote for Ramaphosa, and the [questionable] rating agencies will back off. The myth of a leader who apparently was moral in juxtaposition to an immoral predecessor defined metanarratives in our discourse.

If they had been more honest about the man they crowned a ‘Messiah’ in replacement of his predecessor, they would have had to admit his serving in an era, the same he for self-interest reasons conveniently dubbed wasted years, could not have left him unaccountable, exonerated, and remotely clean. So inebriated were those to sell SA the scam of a president and leader that will answer the economic and jobless crisis of South Africa. While they readily speak of his predecessor in frames of yet to be proven claims of ‘state capture’ and corruption, they strangely do not link any dots to Ramaphosa. They do not show any appetite to engage his utter lack of leadership, his benefit from State coffers through his multiplicity of companies as the Shanduka Free State allegations show.

They could not hold him accountable for his undeniable ‘concomitant action’ that produced the Marikana massacre. They conveniently divorced him from his deputy president role when he served as leader of Government business that presided over the critical components of SOE’s such as Eskom. We heard from his own mouth how he, while leading the Eskom war room, never saw it fit to visit either Khusile or Medupi Power Stations where billions of taxpayers’ money remain unaccounted for. We saw the charade of a Zondo Commission in its season finale has him as the major attraction. A soap opera tale of two political actors anchored in common personal interest defining the Cyril and Raymond R1Bn show. In the case of Ramaphosa a second term and for Zondo the Chief Justice office. These would share in pleasantries, while the glaring contradictions of a man trapped in self-interest sought to exonerate himself and to deceive the SA people to have him as one who stood up from the inside. Their eyes were not opened when they saw a man claiming a flood in Luthuli House wiped out all files of the meetings, he chaired of the deployment committee.

Their uncritical welcoming of a president as the hope never engaged the claim of the morality of conscience against corruption. It never asked Ramaphosa to do more than pay lip service to his bold claims when he is actions and inactions confirms a man the very contradiction the opposite of what South Africa needs. A man in confusion resorting to obfuscation as his primary craft. I have elsewhere postulated Ramaphosa could never be the hope of unity or renewal in the ANC because his rise to ANC high office is directly linked to the factional reality of the ANC. If he must work for unity, he must obliterate the cradle of his presidency and denounce his own ontological base for an ANC presidency.

When Croucamp postulates a mortal woundedness of Ramaphosa, it must be understood in a multiplicity of spheres none more troublesome than his leadership. I am herewith attempting to unpack the mortal woundedness of a president who relied on fresh air, walkabouts and public relations image re-engineered science for his relevance for a tad too long. A president who always deflects in the blaming of others when he extricates himself. Maybe some do not know Ramaphosa’s ambitions to be president of South Africa is not a recent affair. He articulated that while he was an intern at Dolowitz Attorneys. I postulate that it did not matter the party or structure that would bring his legitimate ambitions. Hence, he never really wanted to lead the ANC. Leading the ANC is the means to lead SA.
Croucamp may or may not know; unfortunately, Ramaphosa could never represent the best of the ANC in values defined because Ramaphosa is not authentically ANC in its traditions of existence. He, unfortunately, remains one parachuted into the ANC through the toxic combination of white [both colonial and Afrikaner] monopoly capital interest and the sleepiness of a hungry bunch of recently freed crowd. An ANC political elite who was tantalized by money from the colonial and apartheid elites proved ever willing to become the buffer zone against the legitimate claims of redress for the masses.

Croucamp would know that Ramaphosa could never be the hope to implement any of the ANC’s legitimate and justified radical policies because he never believed or represented any of them in thought persuasion. His task was straightforward.  He would immortalise the ANC into factions of RET ‘demons’ and convenient ‘angels’ of an apparent cliché of an ‘inclusive economy’ notion while speaking of unity. Myths that often in our discourse stand naked yet has traction since those who peddle such include an embedded journalist community [Thuma Mina WhatsApp Crowd, they know themselves]  as hosted in strategic media houses.

Political science students and the research community would have to engage his legacy through the lens of the actual state of the ANC measurable in organisational dysfunction, a factionalised and fractionalised entrenched groups whose worship of self is the order of the day. It is a legacy of an organisation hopelessly in disarray and troublingly unable to honour the basic agreement with its employees to pay them on time. It is an organisation where those who defined the highest powers NOB’s NEC and Cabinet, and Premiers and Mayors are millionaires who, for the more significant part, can do without a monthly salary hence their utter lack of appreciation for a worker’s struggle.

I wish to postulate that Ramaphosa could never be the hope of any economic change in which the masses of colonial and apartheid disenfranchisement come to benefit since he is the signpost of what is wrong with this economy in identity and structure. Meaning the creation of a buffer zone of the political elite, captured by white monopoly capital was selling out the struggle for economic emancipation for blacks. Unfortunately, this buffer zone of ANC elites also leads the liberation movement, entrusted to work for the ideals of a non-racial, non-sexist, and democratic South Africa. Ramaphosa represents the sprinklings of black benefactors of racialised and tangibly unequal economy that bestowed upon him billionaire status. Not for any legitimate work, he in conventional entrepreneurial flair ever performed but since he was their chosen anointed candidate since 1978 to ensure a pliant ANC. His combination of a capitalist billionaire and ANC president is the exact reason why economic transformation that must manifest true black empowerment remains a mirage. The same white crowd, regardless of cloaks, badgered Mandela to make him deputy since their aim was from the start to infiltrate and to ensure an ANC in disarray, malleable and confused in central purpose for its existence.

They know today what some of us always knew that Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa, despite all the verbiage, smiles, smooth talks, and visible resume, can never be an authentic fighter against corruption crimes because his cabinet reeks with people fingered in serious allegations in multi-fora. Ramaphosa’s mortal woundedness is a public reality since South Africans know and experience his failed leadership. Therefore, on the back of what South Africans know, I wish to confirm Ramaphosa haemorrhaging because of his woundedness – a public reality will not see him continuing into a second term. What then do South Africans know about Ramaphosa?

South Africans know that Ramaphosa conveniently told DCJ Zondo that his reason for not acting against others like Zizi Kodwa, David Mahlobo, Thabang Makwetla, Gwede Mantashe, Bheki Cele, is his awaiting the outcomes in a report from the Commission. What a glaring deflection?  A better answer would have been that these are vital people for a CR22 Campaign success.  Ramaphosa, who has relied on the upkeep of the factional divide for his leadership, cannot do without them since he hopes to summit the proverbial Mt. ANC Presidency again come December 2022.

Today, South Africans know Ramaphosa sat on the SIU report knowing the damning findings against his former health minister Zweli Mkhize and lacked the moral compass and leadership to fire Mkhize. He instead allowed Mkhize to submit a request to take leave. Then he used a calculated political serving cabinet reshuffle to get rid of Mkhize. Even when South Africans waited with bated breath to have their leader pronounces Mkhize as a goner, he was at pains to portray Mkhize as having served the country in distinction. What type of interest govern the moral rectitude of leadership for Ramaphosa if it is not his personal interest to survive as paramount?

South Africans know that Oscar Mabuyane, the Eastern Cape Premier, a staunch Ramaphosa backer, abused the death of the Mother of the Nation Mam’ Winnie Madikizela Mandela’s memorial for a moment of personal benefit in R450k. They know that this same premier was fingered in a scam of his education credentials where he was deregistered from Fort Hare University. South Africans know that Mabuyane’s wife is directly implicated in a case opened by the Amatola Water Board. He will tell us he is studying the allegations when these are findings from a constitutionally led chapter nine structure. Why allegations when they are findings?

South Africans and ANC people today know that four years of Ramaphosa’s leadership confirms the worsening of the cancer of corruption, according to a recent Afrobarometer survey led by the Institute for Justice and reconciliation and 94. Almost 64% of people surveyed expressed a view that corruption is increasing and while 49%  is of the view that it increased a lot.

Again, the researchers must problematize the meaning and impact of capital measurable in his unprecedented billion rand election. South Africans know today that Ramaphosa’s marginal win of 179 votes cost more than a billion. Today, they know that he refuses to be transparent with a South African citizenry on who contributed to his CR17 campaign funding.

South Africans are not ignorant. They know today that Ramaphosa was the one to have introduced Brian Molefe’s name to his predecessor and that he was silent about that for the better part of the narrative that Zuma, in an intricate crime of state capture, orchestrated the Brian Molefe CEO status at Eskom.

South Africans know that Ramaphosa sat for ten months on a verdict on his Commissioner of Police, Khehla Sitole. He tried to dance around the intense divisions in the police never acting on the verdict until he in a political tactical move months before Sitole’s retirement wants to act. On another level acting against Sitole is to lend Cele support since Mkhize is gone he needs Cele for his ANC Kwa-Zulu Natal constituency endorsement. His inaction details a police and military intelligence structure fraught in the division if not factionalised along the same gaping fissures of his organisation. His cabinet is toxic in factional interest where governance often takes a backseat, and a CR22 interest is preeminent.

ANC members and South Africa are aware that, political formation, a critical component of ANC tradition, is today reduced to the backbench since every programme in the ANC is subject to the CR22 intentions. Meaning the CR22 ambitions of a second term has become the central or motive force for ANC life in this epoch.  Again, students of the ANC as a liberation movement must engage how the personal ambitions of one man have come to define the totality of organisational life in this season and why this is not problematised and called out for what it is.

South Africans know that despite a slew of job summits and wild promises made to among others Alexandra Township residents that today are conveniently explained away by a covid pandemic, Ramaphosa failed to create the environment for jobs. It knows its youth and graduates remain unemployed because the man entrusted to lead lacks the wherewithal to lead any plan to extend black youth a future in SA.

South Africans know that Ramaphosa failed to firstly understand the need for a restructured economy away from the racialised pillars that attest apartheid and colonial interest ad central.

South Africans know its president was the first in the history of democracy to say, ‘I am not a weak president.’

Ramaphosa cannot be taken seriously either by his supporters and opponents because of what South Africans know about him in failed leadership of his organisation. He is known for his abdication of leadership when it matters and obfuscation of what a South African society needs.

Croucamp like many more are correct for acknowledging that there are growing calls for an NEC Member and Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu presidency to rescue both the ANC and SA from the malaise and capital captured coagulum his leadership depicts. When the call for Sisulu rings louder daily, it is because she represents the actual values of the ANC in a tradition of selfless leadership. When ANC regions and branches pronounce on her candidacy they, recognise her strident fight against corruption.  They call on a return to the landmark of an ANC ethos that confirms putting people first. As we saw with the Israeli and Palestine situation, Sisulu’s decisiveness of leadership to implement ANC policy gives them hope that radical socio-economic transformation will not be an expletive but implemented.

Jim Wallis cautioned us, “The Failure of political leaders to help uplift the poor will be judged a moral failure.’’ When they see Sisulu active in Phoenix burying the dead they know there is hope for the ANC to be recalibrated from the truant and brothel it has become under the R1bn bought presidency. Ramaphosa knows he does not represent the best in ANC values and he regardless of an envisaged R3bn CR22 campaign knows Sisulu is his bridge to cross, his Rubicon and answer to change.

Is Ramaphosa mortally wounded? A resounding yes! His woundedness shows in his paranoia of seeing a second term slipping away because even whites, his real constituency, increasingly see him as a spent force for their agenda. Perhaps my soon to be published book, Ramaphosa: a leadership suspended in a crisis of legitimacy and shrouded in distrust’ reverberates this misplaced and failed leadership.

Clyde. Ramalaine