Cyril needs 10 years to clean up mess
CORRUPTION: CYRIL NEEDS TWO-PRONGED APPROACH TO HEAL SA, PARTY
Deputy ANC president needs a decade to resolve the bog of graft and state capture sinking SA and the party if he becomes the country’s next president, people close to his campaign say.
He would start on positive note because ‘he does not bring scandals with him’.
Cyril Ramaphosa needs 10 years to sort out the mess of corruption and state capture, say those close to his campaign for the ANC presidency. Throughout his campaign, the deputy president has emphasised that state capture must be probed and those responsible for it prosecuted.
One of Ramaphosa’s staunch supporters, Pravin Gordhan, recently urged him to remove Jacob Zuma from power as early as January next year.
Those within the ANC who support Gordhan’s view believe that the organisation and the government will have to be “sanitised” by the removal of both Zuma and his anointed successor, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
“We will ensure that those responsible for dragging the organisation in this mud are identified and neutralised. The state capture architects will have to be punished with imprisonment,” one of the people close to the CR17 campaign said.
However, others point out that if Ramaphosa wins, there will be deep rifts in the ANC and that the deputy president, once in office, will have to work hard, for at least a decade, to heal the wounds within the ANC.
These Ramaphosa allies believe the healing will not be limited to the ANC because by then, Ramaphosa would be head of the state responsible for the entire nation equally wounded by the bruising factional battles of the party. He wants to put the house in order.
One of the primary goals of Ramaphosa’s cleansing and healing decade will be to put an end to factionalism within the ANC, say his supporters.
“Our campaign is not about having Cyril elected, but it’s about fixing the ANC and the country,” one of them told The Citizen.
This view was echoed by political analyst Dr Somadoda Fikeni, who said any leader of the ANC needed to push a two-pronged approach of healing of the ANC and the country.
“Cyril and whoever is elected will start on a positive note because they don’t bring scandals into the office, unlike Zuma who was haunted by these things throughout his presidency,” Fikeni said.
Fikeni said Ramaphosa and his supporters consistently gave a clear message that he would fight corruption by all means. The analyst said this was the matter that a leader must address because there was general anger that the ANC failed to confront it, or act against Zuma on corruption and state capture. As a start towards renewal, Ramaphosa would initiate a target-driven programme of action aimed at healing the 105-year old ANC. The first task would be a focus on building unity among ANC members and building the party structures.
This would involve using “old-fashioned methods” to recruit and grow its membership to the pre-1994 levels.