When the new stinks of decay

CYRIL Ramaphosa has had to deal with some hot potatoes since he assumed office. None of these steaming spuds were of his own making, but his own party has ensured he will have to find a cold bath to dump them in if he wants to succeed in rebuilding this country. The disunity and schizophrenia characterising the ANC under former president Jacob Zuma did not simply disappear along with its erstwhile leader.

With the appointment of Ramaphosa as president, we all hoped for the decayed and corrupt to be swept away by the new.

But, rather like in Berthold Brecht’s poem The Parade of the Old New, this has not happened. Instead, the new is in danger of becoming the old, but with the shiny new Ramaphosa facade. “I stood on a hill and I saw the Old approaching, but it came as the New. It hobbled up on new crutches which no one had ever seen before and stank of new smells of decay which no one had ever smelt before.” Rather than a figure representing unity, Ramaphosa has come to embody compromise between the old guard and the new. The result is that whatever Ramaphosa wants to achieve, there is a price he has to pay. This tit-for-tat politics means that he could appoint Nhlanhla Nene and Pravin Gordhan to the key posts of finance and state enterprises, but he also had to keep in play compromised figures like David Mabuza, now his deputy, and Bathabile Dlamini. These concessions have landed him with other troubles. The old guard is a gift that just keeps on giving.

The ANC now has another headache to deal with – frightened investors who are trying to make sense of the party’s decision to back the idea of land expropriation without compensation. There is nothing more terrifying to the markets than the thought of a Zimbabwe-style land smash and grab.

While Ramaphosa tried to assure the world that this could not happen in South Africa, investors abroad seem unable to discern the nuances that would suggest he is probably correct. Here, the president has to be emphatic and clear about how the party intends ensuring that millions of South Africans, who are poor and landless through dispossession, have a share in the country’s wealth and land. Also how all of this will be done in a way that does not affect the economy, as the ANC put it in its resolution from the 54th national congress.

So, what could upset the markets more? Perhaps talk of nationalising the very institution whose primary purpose is to ensure financial stability in the country.

There again, the Ramaphosa guard, in the form of Nene, reportedly had to step in and stop the ill-conceived ANC motion to debate nationalisation of the SA Reserve Bank.

And so, while Ramaphosa tries to build on his platform of corruption busting, good governance, stabilising the economy and restoring the country’s credit rating, those around him seem just as hell-bent on undermining him. It is naïve to believe that in politics one can achieve noble goals without some compromise. But if he cannot renew and revitalise the ANC, Ramaphosa will find himself living in the horror world envisaged by Brecht, where his role is reduced to simply facilitating the self-seeking goals of a discredited old guard.