Cyril wants his voice to be heard

The country’s deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa, emphatically nailed his ANC colours to the presidential mast in Grahamstown over the weekend, with an apology to Rhodes students over the Marikana massacre – a stigma which continues to haunt him – and an appeal to a cadres’ forum of the Sarah Baartman region.

Ramaphosa’s timbre during both addresses were distinctly different, but added up to the same conclusion: the yawning chasm between the increasingly hostile factions within the ANC have not dimmed his ambitions to lead the ruling party.

To the students, he presented a measured and somewhat contrite face on the 2012 tragedy, which claimed the lives of 34 miners during a wildcat strike at a Lonmin platinum mine near Rustenburg.

“You say you want to appeal to my conscience,” Ramaphosa told the students. “My conscience is that I participated in trying to stop further deaths from happening.”

Ramaphosa, a staunch unionist in his early days, said at the time he stepped into the situation, 10 workers had been killed and his intervention was to “say there is a disaster looming, more workers had been killed and are going to be killed”. The admission is welcomed, though some would say it is long overdue.

To the cadres, he was even more forthright, despite President Jacob Zuma’s caution – backed by ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe and the party’s national chairperson Baleka Mbete – about leaders criticising the party in public and not dealing with matters internally.

Ramaphosa said the party needed to examine allegations of corruption and told branches he would not stop publicly talking about the “contaminated atmosphere” within the ANC.

“Right now some are saying we should not speak out on problems facing the party. They say ‘shhhh’, they say: ‘Be silent, we will fix it’.”

Clearly Ramaphosa is determined to speak out ... and be heard.