Beware the Ides of March, Cyril
AT the heart of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision not to attend this year’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, is the realisation that he is running out of time, out of allies and perhaps out of ideas.
Even worse for him, key power brokers in the ANC no longer see him as someone who will serve two terms as party or state president.
They sense his weakness and they are circling him.
They believe that he is walking his last mile and they are jostling for position.
No-one is watching her, but human settlements, water and sanitation minister Lindiwe Sisulu is building a powerful body of people around her who have the experience to propel an ANC candidate to power.
News that she has appointed former intelligence head Mo Shaik and former national prosecutions boss Menzi Simelane as advisers should not be ignored.
Shaik was one of the key people who brought Jacob Zuma to power.
The man is skilled, strategic, wily — and knows where all the ANC bodies are buried.
He was the key strategist behind Zuma’s ousting of Thabo Mbeki in 2007.
Sisulu has also appointed former social development minister Bathabile Dlamini to chair the social housing regulatory authority interim board.
Dlamini is one of the most underwhelming personalities in South African politics (I am being kind here), but she leads the ANC Women’s League — a body which can make noise and propel key people to prominence.
They did it with Zuma and with others.
Guess who has been one of those leading the campaign for Ramaphosa to fire his ally, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan?
Dlamini, of course.
She is not leading that campaign because she wants David “DD” Mabuza — who betrayed her and her comrades by switching from their Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma camp and went with Ramaphosa in December 2017 — to become president.
She is destabilising Ramaphosa for a whole different candidate.
Meanwhile, the David Mabuza camp is also mobilising.
It, too, does not believe that Ramaphosa is a two-term president. With Eskom and a looming ratings agencies’ downgrade, Ramaphosa is running around like a headless chicken trying to solve Zuma’s numerous messes and putting out fires.
He is in trouble and under pressure in the state and in the party.
The honeymoon is over. Business leaders are demanding answers.
His former supporters inside the ANC are beginning to have doubts about his ability to lead.
The new axis of Mabuza and other disgruntled forces (largely the remnants of the Zuma crowd) in the ANC is feeling emboldened.
They want to cut off Ramaphosa’s ally, Gordhan, and pick off anyone else who raises their head above the parapet.
This year is perfect for their assault on Ramaphosa: they intend to clip his wings at the party’s midterm conference, the national general council, and then make him suffer through small political cuts to his power over the next two and a half years until they vote him out in December 2022.
Alternatively, after the national general council in JulyAugust this year they could call for an early national elective conference to deal with the self-created “emergency” of a collapsing economy.
Will they succeed? It is up to Ramaphosa, really.
He has so far played his cards so close to his chest not many actually know what his game plan is.
Is his decision to stay home for the national executive committee meetings of the party and its lekgotla this week part of his fight back?
Is he even aware that several Brutuses are behind him, about to sink the dagger into his exposed back?
Ramaphosa would have had nothing to offer Davos this year.
His failure to corral the Zuma or anti-clean government elements in his party hangs around his neck like an albatross.
Eskom, SAA, zero economic growth, unemployment, corruption, incompetence and so many other ills of our society hang over him like a dark cloud.
Had Ramaphosa gone to Davos, he would have faced a sceptical, even hostile, crowd.
These, after all, are the people who applauded him and pledged their support to him in 2018 and 2019 when he was triumphant, confident and full of promises.
Two years later, he has pretty little to show for their faith in him.
All they would have to do now as he rambled would be to point at Eskom’s Stage 6 load-shedding in December and he would be exposed.
Ramaphosa promised clean government and a return to an ethic that put people first.
He promised to help us walk away from the disaster of the Zuma years.
These are all noble, admirable, promises.
Yet he will achieve none of it without fixing his divided political party or forcing it to split.
Now the ANC, whose unity he pursues with such determination, is readying to chew him up and spit him out. Will he finally fight back?