Cyril promises to put the people first
‘ITHANK you for the honour that you’ve bestowed on me by electing me into this position. I truly feel humbled to have been given this great privilege of being able to serve our people.” These were the words of Cyril Ramaphosa in a short acceptance speech in Parliament yesterday after he was elected South Africa’s new president. Hours later he was sworn in as president.
Yesterday’s events came a day after the ruling party forced a deeply unpopular Jacob Zuma to resign.
Ramaphosa said he faced a humbling task and would try his best to serve all South Africans. He stressed that South Africa had to come first “in everything that we all do”.
Ramaphosa, 65, was the sole candidate put forward by the National Assembly and takes up the top post almost two decades after he was favoured by Nelson Mandela to be his successor, only to be pushed aside by the party in favour of Thabo Mbeki.
The new president vowed to tackle corruption and a massive rent-seeking scandal that has lost state-owned companies billions and embroiled Zuma, his son Duduzane and some cabinet ministers.
Ramaphosa responded directly to the congratulatory remarks from each opposition leader, including the biting address of DA leader Mmusi Maimane who told the ANC it was the scourge of the country, not Zuma alone, and the party would be punished in the 2019 national elections.
Ramaphosa told Maimane to cut down on the grandstanding and work with him for the good of the country in the lead-up to the elections.
He ended his speech with the promise that “I will try very hard not to disappoint the people of South Africa”.
Ramaphosa is due to deliver the annual, delayed State of the Nation Address this evening.
It was pushed back to allow the political crisis around Zuma’s fate to be resolved.
That ended on Wednesday evening as Zuma resigned in a late-night televised address in which he said he did not wish to divide the ANC but berated the party for not giving him firm reasons for demanding he quit.
Had he failed to resign, the ANC would have removed him from power by backing the motion of no confidence tabled by the EFF.
With the motion falling away, the EFF was denied the opportunity to claim that the ANC had ridden on their ticket to topple the president.
The EFF still tried to create a stir yester- day before Ramaphosa’s election demanding that Speaker Baleka Mbete allow a motion to dissolve Parliament so that the country could hold an early election.
When Mbete objected, saying the motion needed proper notice, EFF MPs responded by saying Ramaphosa could not be trusted, and then walked out of the chamber in protest.
The EFF argued that Ramaphosa was tainted by his role in arguing for police action ahead of the shooting of 34 miners at Marikana in 2012.
The party is expected to prove a relentless opponent, as it had with Zuma.