Ramaphosa – the middle man

AS THE power tussle between potential presidential candidates Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma plays out across the country, the launch of Ramaphosa: The Man Who Would be King tomorrow in Port Elizabeth is likely to have wide appeal.

The author, Ray Hartley, will discuss the book with The Herald deputy editor Nwabisa Makunga, at 5.30 for 6pm at the GFI art gallery, hosted by Fogarty’s Book Shop.

Deputy president Ramaphosa is a familiar figure in South African politics, and is credited with driving through the deal in the 1990s between the apartheid government and the ANC, which was at the heart of South Africa’s democratic Constitution.

He was the ANC’s lead negotiator and the man who persuaded one of the most recalcitrant racist governments in the world to buy into a settlement based on one of its most enlightened bills of rights.

However, once the ink had dried on the Constitution, Ramaphosa found himself politically side-lined.

A talented negotiator capable of driving a hard bargain between implacable enemies, Hartley sees Ramaphosa as the eternal “man in the middle”.

Before the negotiations, he had been the head of the country’s largest mineworkers union. Afterwards, he went into business after concluding a landmark black empowerment deal.

Today, however, as the Jacob Zuma presidency seems to enter its final stretch, Ramaphosa has re-entered politics and is one of a handful of candidates to take over as ANC president and possibly president of the country.

The question Hartley now asks is: “Can the man in the middle lead from the front?”

As a seasoned journalist, Hartley is well-placed to answer this – he was the editor of the Sunday Times, the country’s largest newspaper, for several years – and a published author, having written Ragged Glory: The Rainbow Nation in Black and White.

ý Ramaphosa retails for about R240 and is published by Jonathan Ball.

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