Good optics at the state capture commission, but a worrying lack of candour

It was always going to be a difficult act to pull off: extricating the ANC from an ANC-created near apocalypse requires magical powers beyond the reach of the party’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa. His appearance before state capture inquiry chair Raymond Zondo helped inspire confidence in the workings of our democracy as it, at the same time, sucked the air out of our belief that the ANC, much less its rivals, is anything remotely close to being a leader of society. A cursory look at the opposition parties reveals an even more concerning lay of the land: with the ANC involved in self-inflicted acts of mutilation, what other party comes close to filling the void? The pickings are slim.

Ramaphosa’s appearance was exactly the message our democracy needed to send to the world: respect for the rule of law from the highest office and a strong belief in constitutionalism, even in the face of a constitutionally delinquent former president who should soon be jailed for defying the commission and the Constitutional Court.

But, even though Ramaphosa’s appearance was a tonic, his statements are hardly the kind to inspire confidence.

His acknowledgment that the ANC only started taking action against state capture once it started losing support must worry us all. Put differently, it’s the threat of loss of power and not the desire to do what’s right that spawned the fightback against corruption. If the logic is extended, the electorate must continuously threaten to vote out the ANC for the party to serve South Africans well. It is a terrible acknowledgement, even if a welcome one, and prefaced by a declaration that

Ramaphosa did not want to “defend the indefensible”.

Beyond that, the nation yearned for a more candid examination of the genesis of state capture within the ruling party that, on the surface, Ramaphosa came determined not to supply.

The biggest question he needed to answer was whether he and his comrades were complicit, or simply looked the other way, as Zuma and his acolytes mortgaged the state to the Gupta brothers. His response that the ANC woke up too late to the scandal is indeed a poor attempt to defend the indefensible.

Evidence leader Alec Freund SC had to refer

Ramaphosa to a 2011 front-page article in this newspaper which alluded to ministers accounting not at the Union Buildings but at the Gupta compound in Saxonwold. The obvious question was how do you wake up so late to something on the front page of the country’s biggest newspaper? Ramaphosa’s response communicated either a dearth of reflection in the party or a downright determination to obfuscate the issue.

In the end, Ramaphosa was not sufficiently candid about how complicit the ANC was in the criminal enterprise run by his predecessor Jacob Zuma and the Gupta brothers.

If we are to learn anything from our painful recent history, a history that required the press and civil society to be brave and conduct the kind of investigative journalism that Ramaphosa correctly praised, we must first be honest about what went wrong.

Ramaphosa’s defence of cadre deployment was another affront to our sensibilities. He said “there were certain people put in certain positions to advance certain agendas” and this resulted in “massive system failure”. It felt like extracting teeth. The system of deploying top officials is indeed applied around the globe, but what stopped Ramaphosa from honestly telling South Africans that the ANC’s poor application of this system allowed for state companies to be captured?

With the ANC struggling to find its compass, the country’s second-biggest party, the DA, has had its fair share of race-based voter-alienating exercises from its current and past leaders. The third-biggest party, the EFF, seems too small to matter.

The symbolism of Ramaphosa’s appearance did much for our democracy, but his lack of candour has unleashed consternation.

If we are to learn from our recent past, we must be honest about it