Right with Ramaphosa

South Africa gets a leader who inspires confidence

South Africa did a relatively quick shift last week, replacing as president scandal-plagued Jacob Zuma with successful businessman-politician Cyril Ramaphosa without the necessity of elections.

Why Mr. Zuma needed to go was clear. The meeting of the African National Congress that elected Mr. Ramaphosa president of the party rather than choosing Mr. Zuma’s exwife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, as head of the traditionally dominant ANC, sealed his fate. Mr. Zuma was notoriously corrupt, in a country that is becoming known for the level of its corruption. He was also crude, without the level of sophistication of his predecessors as president of majority-ruled South Africa, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki.

Mr. Zuma was also prone to appeal to his Zulu tribal affiliation. That’s an unwelcome tactic in a country as multiethnic and multiracial as South Africa. The multilayered diversity is one of the country’s strengths, in fact. It is comprised of a heady mix of whites, Africans, Coloreds and Indians. The whites are roughly divided into English-speakers and Dutch-origin Afrikaners. The main African groups are the Sotho, Tswana, Xhosa and Zulu. There are also the mixedrace and other Coloreds, and the Indians. Mr. Zuma addressing crowds in Zulu never helped.

Mr. Ramaphosa has a rich background in South African terms that included friendship and partnership with founding father Nelson Mandela, roots in South Africa’s labor unions, and more recent major success as an investor and businessman. That history should prepare him to tackle some of South Africa’s major problems from a position of both understanding and willpower. The principal problems of the country now lie in the as yet unresolved problem presented by majority rule in 1994.

Political power passed peacefully from the hands of the minority whites to the majority blacks, including the Coloreds and Indians. Economic power at that point was held firmly in the hands of the whites and a sliver of people from the other groups.

A major redistribution was inevitable and appropriate, again by peaceful means, but has not yet occurred for the most part. How to do that without wrecking the economy is the challenge that Mr. Ramaphosa will now face. It is a challenge that Zimbabwe faced and at which its leaders failed, although many of the “givens” were different.

Mr. Ramaphosa has the experience and wherewithal, in the form of South Africa’s formidable resources, to take on that task. He will have to avoid the temptations that many leaders in the world have not avoided, first, to seek to increase his own wealth by way of the presidency, and, second, to try to stay in office for the rest of his life. The world is strewn with leaders who have not been able to avoid this trap.

South Africa, the Africa that his country leads, and the world wish him well in the endeavor that he has undertaken.