Undeniable support for Ramaphosa

THE WIN for the ANC was a resounding victory for President Cyril Ramaphosa. It was a huge vote of confidence by the electorate in Ramaphosa and not so much for the ANC.

This victory for the ANC can only be rightly described as the victory of Ramaphosa’s ANC. He has given it a new image, annihilating the ugly image of the party under Jacob Zuma’s corrupt rule, with the shameless support of a number of his corrupt former ministers and corrupt businesses.

Ramaphosa had to fight a tough battle, and for the most part, alone. He started his campaign with a most indefensible legacy of rampant corruption handed to him by Zuma, who unashamedly told citizens, that his allegiance to the ANC came before the country.

Ramaphosa had to fight against the Zuma faction of the ANC, which tried desperately to destroy him by supporting parties like the ATM, ACM, BLF. Zuma, even had the audacity, at the height of the election campaign, to praise his arch nemesis and rival, Julius Malema – praising him for his potential to be a great leader. Zuma gave Ramaphosa a smack in the face and, it was clear he had the full backing of his faction.

The Zuma faction gambled on the small parties headed by the Gupta lackeys, Manyi, Hlaudi and Mnxitima to take a sizeable number of votes from the ANC and, in so doing, destroy any chances of victory for an ANC under Ramaphosa.

If the ANC under Ramaphosa lost, as planned, the Zuma faction would have pushed for a coalition with the splinter parties and, hopefully, roped in the EFF. Their plans backfired because the Zuma faction, and Zuma himself, had no control of an electorate, who had enough of the corruption.

One survey revealed that Ramaphosa’s popularity amongst the people was as high as 86% compared to Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, who scored a mere 14%. It seems that the Zuma faction miscalculated Ramaphosa’s popularity. Ramaphosa’s popularity even took the loud mouthed Malema by surprise. He accused Ramaphosa of not being voted as a president and challenged him to go on election campaign. Ramaphosa did and gave them all a thrashing.

The eight provinces that the ANC won, was solely through the popularity of Ramaphosa.

Even the Zuma acolyte, Ace Magashule, refuses to accept it.

Ramaphosa had to even contend with the disparaging comments by a another so-called stalwart, Kgalema Motlanthe, who predicted that Ramaphosa was not a saviour to save the ANC, and openly advised people not to vote for the ANC.

Not even Thabo Mbeki’s late support contributed much to Ramaphosa’s victory. Mbeki has the unpopular reputation of being the Aids denialist, so he did not add much value to the campaign.

Ramaphosa did not have the support of Cosatu nor did he need it. Irvin Jim, of the African Socialist Party only got 5 000 votes from his union’s 300 000 members, which means that the rest went to Ramaphosa. Ramaphosa’s victory is a strong vote of confidence in him by the citizens. He doesn’t need the ANC, the ANC needs him.

All his premiers will back the leader, just to save their bacon. Zuma would be the last person that they would want to be associated with now.

I have no doubt that the rest of the branches will swing to Ramaphosa’s side to win in the municipal elections because, for most ANC politicians, politics is the only way to earn a living.

We can be glad that, with Ramaphosa in charge, we have a stable government instead of living through the instability of a fragile coalition government, with amorphous parties that do not see eye to eye.

It is up to our president to carry out the people’s mandate and that is: to get rid of corruption in government, prosecute the criminals in his party and kick start the economy. He is the president that was elected by the people so he no longer has to fear the Zuma faction or the EFF, who ran a campaign on a ticket of lies and divisive racial hate speech.