First 100 days marked in fine style this week
Anyone who wrote up President Cyril Ramaphosa’s first 100 days in office last Monday would have been way out of date by the end of Friday, his actual 100th day. By then North West premier Supra Mahumapelo had gone. Resigned, retired, who cares? Ramaphosa had appointed a new commission of inquiry into Sars with a specific brief to look into whether any politically influential people had received special treatment in their tax affairs when Sars was being run by former President Jacob Zuma’s acolyte Tom Moyane, since suspended. That was after appointing a smart former Supreme Court of Appeal judge, Robert Nugent, to head the commission.
The once-toothless Hawks had announced they were investigating Moyane, and Ramaphosa had appointed Godfrey Lebeya, a policeman with 30 years’ experience and a PhD in law, to head the Hawks, thus ending a string of political appointees in the job, put there by Zuma to protect him.
Zuma, meanwhile, has resigned himself to accepting whatever the courts have to say about him paying his own legal costs, basically admitting he could no longer afford counsel.
Ramaphosa also approved the appointment of a permanent new CEO for Eskom, promoting acting CEO Phakamani Hadebe into the job. He announced a new board for SA Express, the state-owned regional airline that, hours later, was grounded by the Civil Aviation Authority for flying unsafely.
All of that was followed by an impromptu briefing by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo on progress in his commission of inquiry into state capture.
It has been a slow starter and will only put its first witness on the stand in August. The briefing worked to reassure South Africans that it is a hideously complicated job, but I was left in no doubt that Zondo wants to get things right. By the time he begins issuing invitations or subpoenas to people, he has to have his ducks in a row. He can’t afford one misstep.
Ramaphosa has now hit the old boards at Eskom, Denel, SAA, Transnet and SA
Express with a sledgehammer. He has four well-regarded citizens combing the world for $100-billion worth of direct investment over the next five years, a fine economic adviser in Trudi Makhaya, and he is confronting party pressure to nationalise the Reserve Bank (which would make no practical difference to its work whatsoever as the president already appoints all its top management) and to begin expropriating land without compensation.
On the last he is a bit vulnerable because it is clear he will try to do this without changing the constitution. So he will have to score some successes, big ones, within the confines of the current Bill of Rights. Many of our top legal minds say this is perfectly possible.
So are the easy wins. Labour tenants who have been on farms for decades will get their land. Rural families living under traditional leadership in the former Transkei and rural KwaZulu-Natal could get title. The state has a lot of land to make available to new farmers. Near the cities, where pressure for land is huge, the answer is to turn dreadful living conditions into a giant economic opportunity.
People pressing for land near their workplaces in or near urban centres will be given serviced plots upon which to build their own homes. Expropriation will happen, though not at market rates, on open or fallow land held for speculation near all of our major metropoles. The scope for creating value and wealth in the process is obvious.
A 10 000ha piece of open land within spitting distance of a city would be worth an absolute fortune once decent state or council-owned apartments and a livable environment were created on it. The construction industry would benefit. Infrastructure would have to be designed, engineered and built. The apartments would fill with fridges and stoves, TV sets, fibre and furniture.
Properly and sensitively (though quickly) done, expropriation with immediate development could speed our growth to well above the 5% GDP growth targets we keep setting ourselves. Owners of the land should be offered business and economic opportunities on it as well. Build a mall, open a petrol station.
The last thing Ramaphosa needs to do before he goes to the polls is to set the NPA right. NPA head Shaun Abrahams and his coterie have to go. I keep hearing DA MP
Glynnis Breytenbach is readying herself to return to the NPA as No 2. If former public protector Thuli Madonsela continues to shy away from the top job, there is always former NPA head Vusi Pikoli. As straight an arrow as you’ll find anywhere, he would be just fine.