‘We can’t carry on like this’
Confirms meeting DA leaders but says no deal has been struck
● Claiming the ANC has “dropped the ball” and failed South Africa, businessman Roger Jardine has publicly raised his hand to become the country’s next president if the ANC slips below 50% in next year’s elections.
“We need to pick up that ball because the unifying idea, the central purpose, has always been to create a good quality of life for our people. And so this movement is picking up the ball to fulfil that promise,” Jardine said this week in his first interview since leaving business for politics.
“We’re picking up that ball in a new way because the polarised politics of the past 30 years have not worked. People are not happy with the state of our body politic,” he said.
Jardine sat for an interview with this newspaper after the Sunday Times last week reported that he had met DA leaders John Steenhuisen and Helen Zille and that he had been courted by the funders of the DA-led Multi-Party Charter (MPC) to be the face of its campaign against President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The financial backers support Jardine as they see him as an established business figure with struggle credentials who can rival Ramaphosa at the 2024 polls. They are said to be prepared to stump up millions for a Jardine presidency, though he firmly rejected reports that he would have a R1bn war chest at his disposal.
For him to be eligible to be elected president, Jardine will have to be a member of the National Assembly. Hence he is today launching his own political platform, believed to be called Change South Africa Now, at a rally in Riverlea, western Johannesburg, where he was raised in an activist family.
Among those expected to attend are Soweto uprising activist and UDF stalwart Murphy Morobe, former Treatment Action Campaign activist Mark Heywood and lawyer Nicole Fritz, who recently resigned as executive director of the Helen Suzman Foundation.
The launch follows Jardine’s resignation
as chair of banking group FirstRand.
While Steenhuisen confirmed meeting Jardine last week, other MPC leaders have distanced themselves from any negotiations that involve shopping for a presidential candidate. “We don’t engage anyone on behalf of the MPC. We are not in the business of running experiences. ActionSA unequivocally distances itself from these latest developments,” ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba told the Sunday Times.
ANC leaders say Jardine had sought to recruit former leaders of the UDF who are unhappy with Ramaphosa’s ANC.
Jardine comes from a prominent political family and has experience in government as a former director-general of the department of arts and culture, appointed by former president Nelson Mandela in 1994.
But former UDF secretary general Popo Molefe poured cold water over claims that Jardine was involved in the movement. “The story that Jardine was involved in the UDF I don’t know where it comes from. The UDF didn’t have members, it had affiliates. He must state which student movement he belonged to.”
Jardine told the Sunday Times in an interview that he believes South Africans need to be saved from the ANC’s “dysfunctional” and “disabled” government with a “schizophrenic” approach to business.
He said the country cannot survive another five years of the current government, which has reversed the gains of 1994. The “reversal” has resulted in a situation “where our people now are reduced to very undignified experiences when they interact with public institutions”.
“No grandmother should sit in the sun waiting for her pension payout, you should not be dying of cholera in 2023, you should not go to hospital where the staff are overworked and underresourced and you don’t know if your granny or relative is going to die in the corridor,” Jardine said.
“We want to change this trajectory where the state is failing but it’s part of a passion for restoring the dignity of the people of this country.”
Though he grew up in the ANC, Jardine says he does not recognise the current movement as it is not the ANC he knew.
“And so what we are saying is that change is urgent. We can’t have another five years of this dysfunction. Which means as we build out our platform and we look to participate in the elections in 2024, it is time to step out of our conventional ways of thinking,” he said.
“It is time for South Africans who may disagree on a range of issues to forge a common platform for how we want to take South Africa forward and work together.”
While most polling suggests the ANC vote is likely to fall below 50%, it is likely to remain the single largest political player after next year’s elections. But Jardine believes opposition parties should do all they can to ensure the ANC is unable to form a government.
Jardine says the ANC has, especially in the past 10 years, stripped South Africans of the dignity they gained in 1994 when they were able to choose their own government for the first time.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that South Africa has a political problem,” Jardine said. “We can put the best CEO into any state-owned company while we have the political structure that we have, and decision-making which is not very clear. It appears to be schizophrenic: one day the private sector is loved, the next it is the root of all evil, and the next day [business] is being asked to set up task teams to help solve social ills,” he said.
“There’s no unifying idea about governance in this country from our government.”
Jardine plans to form alliances with likeminded opposition parties such as those in the MPC, which includes the DA and IFP.
“So we’re going to be talking to other political parties, other formations of civil society and broader society. Because we can’t carry on in this way. If we just carry on with our traditional voting patterns, ideological behaviours, if we stay stuck in this rut, it’s not going to be good,” he said.
He believes the ANC has regressed in terms of what it vowed to achieve when it gained power. It is failing to govern and South Africans are feeling the pinch.
“The reason we are in this situation is because the government, through its own party machinations, has become disabled in terms of executing its mandate to serve the people,” said Jardine. “And so the government has to change and the politics has to change, so when I say we’ll talk to everyone out there we’re going to be talking to people who agree that we have a political problem and that we have to unite to find a political solution which does not include the ANC. We have to campaign to change the government.”
He said he has not spoken to the charter members about becoming its presidential candidate but confirms meeting Steenhuisen and Zille, as reported by this publication, but insists no agreement has been entered into.
“I’ve had no engagement with the MPC, that’s purely speculation and I look forward to talking to their members to share what we’re thinking of doing because I think that we have a lot in common on the way forward. They’ve covered a lot of ground and it’s admirable so we will listen and learn from them. We will share with them our view but that conversation has not happened,” he said.
“So I met the DA and the others. The conversations are very broad and general, there’s no agreement. It’s just how do we look to the future around a shared platform, we’re launching this initiative and we’ll be in touch.”
His vision for a new government is one that has the private sector playing a critical role in helping the state. He believes there’s interest from the private sector to pour money into the dysfunctional state-owned enterprises such as Eskom and Transnet but because of politics this has been thwarted.
Jardine, though backed by business and the private sector, says he is not their candidate and denied business has placed R1bn at his disposal to run for president.
“Can I just say this? There’s no billion rand. I don’t know where that number comes from,” he says. “We are fundraising, and we’re going to be doing more of it. We will be reaching out to patriotic South Africans who have clear interests and are invested in the future of this country. There’s no way to launch a political initiative without financing, and every party is doing it.”
Molefe sought to distance the UDF brand from the Jardine project, saying none of the UDF former leaders were involved. “The initiative that is happening, we are aware of it ... We think it’s fundamentally a right-wing initiative that seeks to co-opt progressive people to give it credibility.” He revealed that Jardine was not part of organising the UDF’s 40th anniversary.
He said he had spoken to several former UDF leaders, including Frank Chikane, Trevor Manuel, Valli Moosa, and Cheryl Carolous and none of them were involved in Jardine’s party. “There is nobody who could call themselves a UDF leader who is involved in this thing.”
He said Jardine’s project was started “by a group of people who sat somewhere, who have a lot of money, who decided to get Jardine to do this thing”.
He said Jardine’s party would not succeed. “Anybody who wants to seriously campaign will need a footprint in the country, a clear identity and a brand — which is why I think they are trying to use the UDF brand.”