Cyril of the ANC: toeing the party line or straightening it?

President Cyril Ramaphosa will make two long-awaited appearances before the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture in coming weeks. This week, for two days, he will wear his party colours, testifying as head of the ANC. Later, he will testify as head of state, but it is his first appearance that will be more keenly awaited, and for good reason. While we are asked to believe, and there is some evidence of this, that the government is being run by determined new brooms sweeping clean, the corresponding clean-up of the party has been more problematic, to put it charitably.

Ramaphosa paid a high price for his victory at the ruling party’s national conference at Nasrec in 2017. Part of that price was the inclusion of factional figures, prime among them secretary-general Ace Magashule, in the top leadership. Magashule has become a beacon for party discontents under the banner of radical economic transformation. Some of his followers face serious criminal charges, as he does, and are being asked to “step aside” from their party roles until their cases have been finalised. The RET camp dismisses these actions as politically inspired, led by the Ramaphosa faction to purge opponents.

So Ramaphosa the ANC president will have a good story to tell Zondo, or rather this latest chapter constitutes a good story inasmuch as the rest of the saga, the years of buildup to Nasrec, suggest a more complex and indeed troubling narrative.

The Ramaphosa-led cleanup in the ANC, and the “nine wasted years” putdown of the administration of former president Jacob Zuma may go some way towards burnishing the image of Ramaphosa the reformer. But the lingering question everyone would like an answer to is, why did

Ramaphosa seemingly sit by and allow state capture by

Zuma and the Gupta family and their henchmen? Who can forget the infamous video of Zuma “conducting” his cabinet “choir”, taken sometime in 2016, at the height of state capture? While some cabinet ministers endured the awkward charade in stony-faced silence,

Ramaphosa grins sheepishly, if not widely, throughout.

Perhaps one can read too much into a single sneaked video, but was it a metaphor for a man who smiled as the country was being laid to siege and reduced to junk status, all the while planning his own ascent to power?

Also, if state capture was as harmful to the national wellbeing as we know it is, was it not equally immoral, unethical and plainly illegal back then? And if so, shouldn’t more effort have been made to stop Zuma in his tracks?

Whether he stayed silent to further his own prospects in the longer term, or because speaking out was considered anathema in a party that prizes blind loyalty above all else, we may get some answers this week.

In this vein, Ramaphosa may also be asked to comment on the ANC’s contribution to the nonperformance of the elaborate structures of oversight when it came to state capture. Where were the inquiring minds in parliament? At least the party can argue that its own internal processes unwittingly aided and abetted state capture, but what of parliament, which is constitutionally mandated and instructed to hold the executive to account? With the exception of a few ANC MPs, and the one public office not yet fallen to ANC control, the public protector, the silence was deafening. Remember Nkandla?

While he’s about assuring us that a culture of self-serving obeisance is not part of the ANC’s fabric, Ramaphosa may also shed a little light on the murky explanations of cadre deployment offered by Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s national chair. Several top-ranking politicians and officials complicit in the state capture project have proved convincingly before Zondo that they were figureheads. Gormless and without contrition, their testimony told of their veering from brazen interference in matters of which they have no knowledge to criminal negligence in respect of matters for which they are paid.

It could be a tough two days for the president of the ANC.

Shouldn’t more effort have been made to stop Zuma in his tracks?