SA mining applauds new ANC president
He fought the injustices of white minority rule from within South Africa
ANC delegates rose in song praising their preferred leaders ahead of the ruling party’s leadership results announcement yesterday.
The supporters of the two presidential candidates, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, chanted around plenary in Nasrec Johannesburg.
Markers were then whipped out with “CR17” and “NDZ” and hoisted high as the chanting continued.
Dlamini Zuma supporters sang their favourite “Phakama Nkosazana, ixesha lisondele.” loosely translated, they call on Dlamini Zuma to rise as her time to lead has come.
The Ramaphosa supporters sang “on your marks, get set, we are ready for Ramaphosa” as the two groups tried to outdo each other.
Some NEC members joined in song, dancing and waving from the front of the plenary.
The Chamber of Mines last night wished Ramaphosa well, but acknowledged he and other leaders of the party have “a considerable” task at hand.
“We hope to see a renewed focus by the ruling party on responsible and ethical leadership in the national interest across all sectors of the economy and at all levels of society.
“The future of South Africa and its people depend on it,” said the chamber’s chief executive, Roger Baxter.
Meanwhile, analysts said the choice of Ramaphosa over his main rival for the ANC’s top job, Dlamini Zuma, is likely to chart a reformist course for South Africa, which has lost its lustre under President Jacob Zuma.
A lawyer with an easygoing manner, Ramaphosa has vowed to fight corruption and revitalise an economy that has slowed to a near-standstill under Zuma’s scandal-plagued leadership.
While Ramaphosa, a hugely successful businessman, has backed calls for “radical economic transformation”, an ANC plan to tackle inequality, he tends to couch his policy pronouncements in more cautious terms.
Unlike Zuma or Dlamini Zuma, Ramaphosa was not driven into exile for opposing apartheid, which some of the party’s more hardline members hold against him.
He fought the injustices of white minority rule from within South Africa, most prominently by defending the rights of black miners as leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
A massive miners’ strike led by Ramaphosa’s NUM in 1987 taught business that “Cyril was a force to be reckoned with,” said Michael Spicer, a former executive at Anglo American.
“He has a shrewd understanding of men and power and knows how to get what he wants from a situation,” Spicer said.
The importance of Ramaphosa’s contribution to the talks to end apartheid is such that commentators have referred to them in two distinct stages: BC and AC, Before Cyril and After Cyril.
Ramaphosa also played an important role in the drafting of South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution, held up as one of the most cogent in the world.