Ramaphosa: 2019 sun sets on euphoria
AS THE YEAR closes on Cyril Ramaphosa’s damp performance as president of South Africa, the lowlight is his telling international investors that the country was recovering from his predecessor, Jacob Zuma’s “nine wasted years”.
Eskom’s load shedding, which this month reached an unprecedented Stage 6 level, was another incident that put an end to “Ramaphoria” (a PR exercise aimed at boosting his support), said political analysts.
He received a lot of backlash after he told delegates of the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that Zuma’s term of office had been “a wasted nine years”. He had been Zuma’s deputy during that time, making him the second-most powerful person in the country. Ramaphosa had also held portfolios such as chair of the deployment committee, head of government business and head of the committee into state-owned enterprises (SOES).
Political analyst Thabani Khumalo described the statement, which Ramaphosa later retracted, as being reckless and dishonest.
“He was not honest, in fact he was just politicking as that is how politics works. He was part of that chaos, but the fact that he admitted (the past mistakes) and came forward to say ‘yes, those nine years were wasted, I am prepared to take this country into the new dawn’, we have to give him the whole space and support,” said Khumalo.
Those who differed with Ramaphosa said they were not nine wasted years as two new universities – the University of Mpumalanga, and Sol Plaatje University in the Northern Cape – were built during Zuma’s term of office.
This year, Ramaphosa has been on a collision course with King Goodwill Zwelithini who blamed him for orchestrating a plan to destroy the Ingonyama Trust, which administers 2.9 million ha of Kwazulu-natal rural land on behalf of the Zulu Kingdom.
The presidential advisory panel on land reform and agriculture, which conducted an investigation into land, recommended that the Trust either be reviewed or scrapped.
The king accused those who wanted the Ingonyama Trust Act repealed of being driven by “Zuluphobia” and hellbent on destroying the Zulu nation.
“I wanted to see if he was not disrespecting me because I have my own easy way of dealing with those who are disrespecting me,” the king told his subjects during a Reed Dance ceremony at his Enyokeni Palace at Nongoma, in northern Kwazulu-natal, in September.
“I wrote to him and I invited him to talk to the Zulu nation at a stadium and tell them what he intends to do with your land.”
Ramaphosa was elected ANC president in December 2017. He took over as president after the party’s victory in that year’s May general elections.
Some critics have accused the Ramaphosa administration of delaying the amendment to the Constitution which aims to expropriate land without compensation.
There has also been criticism of the unbundling of Eskom into three entities, a move seen by critics as an attempt to privatise the power utility.
President’s New Dawn hasn’t materialised, leaving the nation deflated, writes Bongani Hans
AS WE prepare to greet the new year, what better time for a spirited debate about our learned friends of the judiciary.
Do you think it’s proper for our judges to express their personal views on contentious socio-political issues on public platforms?
Or should they maintain a silence while on the bench for fear of compromising the impartiality of their office?
And, while on the subject, should they keep their personal views to themselves even after they have retired?
The issue came to the fore recently when the policy fellow of Institute of Race Relations (IRR),
John Kane-berman cautioned the Chief Justice Mogoeng
Mogoeng against expressing his views on contentious issues like transformation, colonialism and land reform.
“The question is whether the chief justice should permit himself the luxury of giving vent in a public lecture to powerful views on issues that may come before him as a judge.
“He warned in his Nelson Mandela lecture (in November) about the importance of making sure ‘that we don’t have a compromised