Ramaphosa is doing his best while being held back by a recalcitrant party
President Cyril Ramaphosa bid a hasty and unscheduled farewell to his hosts at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London this week. His exit, it was explained, was to allow him to try to quell the fires of unrest in North West, where the deleterious rule of premier Supra Mahumapelo has brought the province to its knees. That Ramaphosa chose to rush back to deal with the situation must have raised eyebrows, coming as it did just days after the president unveiled a top-level team to scour the financial capitals of the world in search of R1.2-trillion in foreign investment.
The unrest in North West, which is a response to the corruption, cronyism and avarice that have flourished under Mahumapelo, neatly captures the dilemma faced by South Africa and its energetic “new broom” president. While Ramaphosa may be wined and dined in the world’s money centres, back home he faces near-insurmountable challenges in the form of recalcitrant senior ANC leaders reluctant to abandon the old ways of doing things, as they were done under former president Jacob Zuma, following his example.
The North West uprising underlines that communities are taking matters into their own hands, and speaks of a growing impatience with ANC leaders who talk big about transformation and the poor but whose actions strongly suggest a determination to line their own pockets.
With Ramaphosa back in the country, and hard at work to resolve the North West impasse, potential investors may marvel at South Africa’s hands-on president and his can-do attitude. But the doubters among them will wonder whether governance in South Africa is at breaking point, with impatience reaching critical levels as the trust between the governors and the governed is dissipated amid growing poverty and frustration.
In North West, an entire province appears to have been captured, and resolving that issue with clear and authoritative actions may go some way towards demonstrating that Ramaphosa is indeed in charge.
Which is why there will be disappointment, and even dismay, that Ramaphosa has not yet done the obvious and come out more strongly against the premier, and for the people. Perhaps he is biding his time, and fulfilling inner-party bureaucratic requirements.
But there remains a suspicion that Ramaphosa does not have the unconditional backing of important elements in his party.
Those who are resisting the necessary steps to be taken if the promise of his “new dawn” is to be realised have a handy fallback in the form of the policy resolutions passed by the party at the December national conference that brought Ramaphosa to power.
It can’t be easy, going around the world pleading for investment when the ruling party is hellbent on implementing expropriation of land without compensation, or making a dramatic and near-pointless power grab at the Reserve Bank.
Of course, Ramaphosa, negotiator and diplomat that he is, will be at pains to explain South Africa’s history, and in his practical way will highlight how a well-structured and orderly plan for land redistribution will put the economy on a new level.
The same can be said for radical economic transformation, whose chief supporter, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, lost out to Ramaphosa in December. No matter his victory, though, Ramaphosa has been saddled with radical economic transformation and, again, he has sought to lend it a pragmatic gloss, pointing to its growth potential.
If Ramaphosa is battling to get the leading lights of his own party to sing from the same hymn sheet, he seems to find solace in the approval of EFF leader Julius Malema, a figure whose inflammatory rhetoric can hardly be much of a come-on for investors.
South Africans who care for jobs above policy, children above ideology, and the future over settling old historical scores will wish Ramaphosa well in his investment quest. The burning question, though, is whether the ANC as a whole similarly wishes him well.
It can’t be easy, going around the world pleading for investment