Malema and Rees-Mogg harbour delusions of power

The only national leader I can think of in a more precarious position than President Cyril Ramaphosa is British Prime Minister Theresa May. She runs a minority government and is about to deliver arguably the worst imaginable terms for Brexit (the UK’s breakaway from the EU). Essentially, her plan is to leave the EU but remain in a customs union with it.

That means the UK leaves the EU but will still be subject to EU rules on trade without being able to influence them in any way. It won’t even be able to cut its own trade deals.

It is an absolutely pathetic outcome after more than two years of negotiation and planning.

She cannot afford “No Deal” because that would mean closing the border between Northern Ireland and the republic in the south and, worse, subjecting British industry to a border between Dover and Calais. The UK car industry would collapse in a week, so dependent is it on “just in time” manufacturing processes.

But here’s the thing. Inside her own Conservative Party the group of most ardent supporters of Brexit, led by the ultra-snooty Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, has been unable to mount a motion within the party of no confidence in May. All this time they have threatened and warned. But now that they have decided they need a new prime minister for what may be a new and early election, they’re exposed as a bunch of washed-out old men. They can’t do it. They need 48 MPs to write letters supporting a challenge to May. They haven’t got 30.

I was thinking about this watching, on TV, the protests by the EFF this week outside the commission of inquiry into state capture while former finance minister and now public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan was giving evidence.

The protests were unremarkable. People in red T-shirts were bused in and given instructions to say, or shout or sing, “Pravin must fall” all day. Then party leader Julius Malema arrived and made a brief series of routine, though of course blood-curdling, threats against journalists, disgraceful insults against the commission and Gordhan, and outright lies about Gordhan’s daughter.

And then he left. Soon afterwards a member of staff from Tiso Blackstar, publishers of the Sunday Times, tried to leave the premises in her car. The state capture inquiry is happening in the same building. She was told she couldn’t leave. Please, she said, I need to get home.

“OK,” said the red-shirted youth blocking her, “but first you have to say Pravin must fall.”

“Fine,” she said to him wearily. “Pravin must fall.” He waved her through.

I don’t use this to suggest that Malema’s threats and insults were not serious. They were. But they’re a sign of frailty in him in the face of mounting evidence that he and the EFF may have benefited from the looting of poor people’s money at VBS Mutual Bank and ahead of an election in which he needs to find a million new votes to merely double his 2014 poll tally to 12%.

In politics you need the thickest of skins. Jacob Rees-Mogg had Britain believe he could topple Theresa May unless she delivered a clean break from the EU. Similarly, Julius Malema has people believing he can play Ramaphosa like a puppet.

The election will reveal all. I still believe a vote for Ramaphosa and his reforms is a reasonable option come next year, even though it would save the ANC from splitting.

Former DA leader Helen Zille used to make a cogent argument for the future of the ANC being one in which it would fragment left to the EFF, and right to the DA.

But that was four years ago. Since then the EFF has strengthened and the DA has not. But Zille’s successor, Mmusi Maimane, takes issue, for obvious reasons, with the notion of empowering Ramaphosa to keep the EFF out of the ANC.

“The notion that we must give the ANC a clear majority to avoid an ANC-EFF coalition relies on the assumption that the ANC would choose to go into coalition with the EFF over the other available options,” he says in his latest newsletter. “But other options do exist. An ANC-EFF coalition is not the only possibility.”

Oh really? Is he possibly suggesting the DA would consider a coalition with a Ramaphosa ANC should it fall short of 50% in 2019?

He covers himself a bit in his piece but the possibility is left hanging there. We must be on the alert for signs of Mmusi going soft on Cyril.