Ramaphosa’s best bet is for early election
Iam readying myself for an early election. It’s always good to be prepared anyway, but the way our politics are aligning tells me that if President Cyril Ramaphosa waits until the middle of 2019 he may struggle.
Mainly it’s about the land question. Without fundamental land reform, South Africans will forever live on the edge of their seats. The question is, of course,
how. Can Ramaphosa go to the nation with the current parliamentary committee looking at changes to the Constitution already done, or would he be better off campaigning with the question still open?
I think the answer is clearly the latter. If, as seems likely, the ANC majority on the committee decides on anything less than the wholesale expropriation, without compensation, of farms and homes, he faces not only the wrath of the EFF but anger within a section of his own party as well.
It has to be fudged somehow because wholesale expropriation, or even just the adoption of powers allowing the state to take land it thinks it needs, would lead to a dramatic loss of investor confidence in the future of the country, and Ramaphosa knows that.
With the loss of confidence would come a withdrawal of investment and a long and torturous continuation, at best, of our current poor and jobless growth. Unemployment would rise, the rand would fall and inflation would begin to gnaw ravenously at our savings and wealth.
People often forget how poisonous inflation — the rate at which prices rise — can be. It would make it almost impossible for new owners settled on farms or in urban homes to make any headway beyond mere occupation.
Costs would rocket, the rush to the cities would intensify and the scale of rural poverty, already spectacular, would be breathtaking.
It would be madness to go to the electorate with all of that already under way. Far better, surely, to begin now to make land available to people willing to build their own homes, to score some victories over vacant or fallow land, rural and urban, as is perfectly possible under the current Constitution, and to promise more during a campaign.
The opposition parties are not in a good space. The DA is struggling with self-inflicted injuries and will be lucky to turn its position around quickly. In the last general election in 2014 it took 22.2% of the vote. A year ago, with Jacob Zuma still in power, it was polling over 30% in its own research. That has changed a lot. For the worse.
Julius Malema’s EFF will almost certainly increase on the 6.4%, or 1.2-million votes, it won in 2014. It hopes to double its vote. That in itself would be a huge achievement, but to get to just 13% the party needs more than 1-million new voters.
But with its commitment to nationalising all land, the EFF risks alienating even those middle-class black voters who are casting around for an alternative to the ANC. The party knows this and has cast its proposition as one where they would nationalise the land you live on but not the structures on it.
They would talk to the banks, who would, as I understand it, be expected to lower bond repayments in accordance with the loss of land.
But that would shred bank balance sheets and make it harder, not easier, for banks to lend money. Banks’ loans are their assets and land is an asset on most big listed company balance sheets. Land nationalisation would cripple them all.
Foreign investment would vanish. It is fashionable, I know, to disparage foreign investment, but we cannot live without it.
Our savings rate, at 15%, is one of the lowest in the world. And foreign investment is not the money of rich capitalists smoking cigars and sipping expensive whisky.
It is the savings of ordinary people — doctors in Singapore, teachers in Italy and workers in Japan. They all want a return on their money or they’ll go elsewhere.
An early election would be difficult for the ANC too. Former party treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize told the ANC’s December conference it was basically bankrupt and elections are expensive. It spent R429m in 2014 and almost R1bn on the local elections in 2016 to win just 53.9% of the total vote.
Those difficulties aside, and obviously paying heed to experience that a week is a long time in politics, Ramaphosa would still calculate that sooner is better than later.
Especially, perhaps, as expectations of a looming emerging market crisis compound and grow.
All things being equal, an election would galvanise a degree of unity in a divided party, and he badly needs a mandate he can call his own.
With Judge Raymond Zondo’s (long-promised) commission of inquiry into state capture potentially in full swing and action to inspire public confidence ignited by good new appointees at the National Prosecuting Authority and some targeted arrests, Ramaphosa would have a backdrop to campaign in front of, which should keep the ANC’s 50%plus-one majority intact.
AN ELECTION WOULD GALVANISE A DEGREE OF UNITY IN A DIVIDED PARTY, AND RAMAPHOSA BADLY NEEDS A MANDATE HE CAN CALL HIS OWN