ANC’s new leader Cyril Ramaphosa
Members of South Africa’s governing African National Congress [ANC] party recently elected deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa as their party’s president after a fierce election battle that saw him defeating Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, ex-wife of incumbent president Jacob Zuma. Dlamini-Zuma is a medical doctor, former minister and anti-apartheid veteran in her own right. Though she had the support of President Zuma who wanted her as ANC leader and subsequently to succeed him as South Africa’s president, she was defeated by Ramaphosa, who enjoyed the support of Zuma’s fiercest opponents, business groups and middle-class black voters in cities. Zuma’s political standing has been weakened by 783 corruption charges hanging on his neck.
Ramaphosa is likely to become South Africa’s next President unless the ruling party is dislodged by any of the leading opposition parties because of its recent dismal outings under Zuma. However, ANC called for an elective national convention to replace Zuma before the 2019 elections because it wanted to boost its chances. Ramaphosa has an uphill task ahead of him in terms of redeeming the ANC’s battered image and convincing voters that it would no longer be business as usual.
ANC was formed in 1912 hot on the heels of the South Africa Act of 1910 that established the Union of South Africa, black’s treatment after the South African War and numerous laws that controlled and restricted black movement and labour. It soon became the country’s leading liberation movement, won the first democratic elections in 1994 and has been ruling ever since. Jacob Zuma’s presidency has however dented the image of Nelson Mandela’s party. ANC’s poor standing came to the fore during last year’s local election when it lost control in prominent cities including Pretoria, Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay after black middle-class voters abstained from voting or voted for the opposition parties. Ramaphosa must calm prayed nerves as many chieftains were left with grievous political injuries.
Equally challenging is the composition of the party’s top six that will provide the toughest test of his leadership yet. He got a top six evenly split between his camp and that of his rival, Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma. Ramaphosa won the presidency by 179 votes, while the two other candidates on his slate, former secretarygeneral Gwede Mantashe and Gauteng ANC chairperson Paul Mashatile were elected national chair and treasurer-general, respectively. But the all-important secretariat, effectively the chief executive and deputy based at the party’s headquarters at Luthuli House, went to members of the other slate: Ace Magashule and Jessie Duarte, with Mpumalanga kingmaker David Mabuza who was elected the deputy president with the widest margin of all the candidates.
While Ramaphosa has received support from the business world, he will face serious challenges as leader of a country with 27.7% official unemployment and where the economy is expected to expand by just 0.7% in 2018 after dipping into a recession this year. However, the biggest succour is his antecedent. As a protégé of Nelson Mandela, many South Africans and individuals, countries and corporations who monitor political development in the country expect him to do more than enough to revitalize some of the policies and programmes of Mandela, heal wounds and reactivate positive diplomatic ties with other African countries. Mandela pushed for him to be his successor in the late 1990s.
Now 65, Cyril Ramaphosa was born on November 17, 1952 and is known to be an astute politician, businessman, activist, and trade union leader who has been Deputy President of South Africa under President Zuma since 2014. He is also the Chairman of the National Planning Commission, which is responsible for strategic planning in South Africa. Ramaphosa built up South Africa’s biggest and most powerful Apartheid-era trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and he was ANC’s Chief Negotiator during South Africa’s transition to democracy. He is also a prominent businessman with an estimated wealth of $450 million.We hope he is the man to turn ANC and South Africa around.