Six mistakes that Ramaphosa must correct to save his presidency
He must not forget the poor in a rush to embrace middle class
● History shows that the reputation of politicians is often made, or broken, in a crisis. So far, Cyril Ramaphosa is having a good crisis as far as the middle classes — black and white — are concerned. His support from them has been rapturous.
This is understandable. Thabo Mbeki’s denialism in the HIV/Aids crisis resulted in social catastrophe. In contrast to Mbeki, Ramaphosa has a competent minister of health in Zweli Mkhize and is taking advice from the best medical scientists. Ramaphosa’s scientifically based response to the Covid-19 pandemic is a welcome change from Mbeki’s paranoid nationalism, and also from the empty bombast of right-wing demagogues like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson.
And it’s not difficult to see why people are in raptures about Ramaphosa after years of Jacob Zuma’s kleptocracy. We all shudder to think how Zuma would have mishandled this crisis.
However, Ramaphosa is making six serious mistakes:
Mass testing: While the state moved fast to implement a shutdown, it did not start well with testing large numbers. It seems now to be rolling out testing at sufficient speed and scale. International experience shows that an effective response to Covid-19 requires social isolation and mass testing. We have got this only half right.
Centralising information: To combat fake news and conspiracy, science depends on free and open discussion. If medical professionals are not encouraged to participate in a free and open debate, we risk making mistakes, and not being able to speedily rectify them. This may be why there has not been enough open debate about our failures to implement testing at speed and scale.
Poor focus on economic impact: The state has operated as if the health and the economic questions can be dealt with separately. This is not the case. With mass unemployment and millions without adequate nutrition, access to decent housing and sanitation, and worsening public health care, the economic crisis had health implications before Covid-19. The damage that the shutdown will do to the economy is going to make the crisis in public health worse in the months and years to come.
The measures to mitigate the huge economic costs are inadequate. Economic thinking in the ANC is dominated by neoliberals, who are reluctant to increase social spending. Our leading economists — people of the stature of Duma Gqubule and Vishnu Padayachee — have warned about this. But the hawks in the Treasury won’t bend. The result will be mass immiseration that will lead to declining public health and escalating social instability, fertile ground for dangerous forms of populism in and outside the ANC.
Iron fist: Ramaphosa has ceded too much power to the authoritarians in his cabinet. Putting the army on the streets was an error. The army, along with the police and private security companies, have frequently been abusive, and lives have been lost.
The middle classes are generally treated with respect by those enforcing the lockdown but poor and working-class people have been subject to abuses. In Durban and Cape Town this has included unlawful and violent evictions.
As many commentators have noted, when states impose authoritarian measures in a crisis they often retain them long after it has passed. Ramaphosa runs another risk. As recent statements from trade unions and social movements show, there is desperation and anger in poor and working-class communities.
Every time one of the police, the army or private security abuses a member of the public, the social contract that legitimises the authority of the state is undermined. The way the lockdown is being policed is damaging the legitimacy of the state. The intersection of routine brutality in the policing of the lockdown with a devastating
economic crisis could result in social unrest. Sidelining social and trade movements:
Ramaphosa has failed to include popular organisations in planning the state’s response to the lockdown. Business, and in particular finance capital, is gushing about its new relationship with the government and its inclusion in decisionmaking. But social movements and trade unions, in an angry tone, indicate that they are not included. This will compromise the effectiveness of the government’s engagement with the poor and the working class, undermine the legitimacy of the measures taken and deepen the alienation of those most at risk from Covid-19 and from the escalating economic crisis.
Ideological contradictions: Ramaphosa has not resolved the political contradiction on which his presidency rests. He came to office with the support of two constituencies. One was big business and the few neoliberals in the ANC, people like Tito Mboweni and Trevor Manuel. The other was the Left in the ANC, notably the SACP and Cosatu. The neoliberals and the Left opposed Zuma’s kleptocracy. Both saw Ramaphosa as a viable alternative.
Ramaphosa will not hold the presidency if the Left in the ANC turns against him. However, the violence against poor and working-class people in the lockdown risks turning the Left’s constituency against Ramaphosa.
Mboweni and many on the Right outside the ANC enthusiastically back the prospect of a bailout by the International Monetary Fund. This is something that the Left in the ANC could never accept. It would end autonomy over economic and policy questions, and enforce austerity that would devastate the poor and working class.
Ramaphosa’s inability to satisfy the neoliberals and the Left puts him at risk of losing the Left, and the presidency.
We are right to be relieved that we are not led by Mbeki or Zuma in this crisis, and to note that Ramaphosa is superior to Johnson, Bolsonaro and Trump. But we also need to confront Ramaphosa’s failures honestly and seriously, and discuss alternatives openly and rigorously.