Ramaphosa leads the ANC’S self-correction
WHILE Ramaphosa tried to assert his authority at the January 8 statement celebrations in KZN last week, it was clear there were still enormous challenges to be confronted despite the mantra of unity.
He may have done a good job in KZN, but there were moments when he looked decidedly weak on Jacob Zuma’s turf. His constant attempts to placate Zuma and Zuma’s supporters in the ruling party make it seem as if he lacks the power to lead from the front and effect a genuine clean-up.
If Ramaphosa spoke and acted decisively against the looters, he would win millions of decent people to his side. But, for some reason, he is unwilling or unable to take the high road. If the explanation does not lie in a weak character (and I don’t think it does), it seems logical that Ramaphosa’s political paralysis is a result of the balance of forces within the ANC.
It is clear that the faction of the ANC that supports the plunder of the state to enrich a new elite has not accepted defeat. It is pursuing a multi-pronged strategy to undermine Ramaphosa with, no doubt, the eventual aim of recapturing the state.
The polling indicates that after the widespread disgust for the ruling party during the Zuma years, Ramaphosa is a more popular figure than Zuma was in the last years of his disastrous rule. If Ramaphosa does well in the polls, the faction of the ANC that openly celebrates corruption will be severely weakened. Many have argued that this is our best hope for a stable future.
It would, indeed, be catastrophic if Ramaphosa fared badly in the election with the result that the ANC had to turn to the EFF to govern.
The EFF is now an openly procorruption, and authoritarian force, and an alliance with them would pull the ANC so deeply into the political sewers that the party would never be able to “self-correct”.
At a time in global history in which centrist leaders are losing power to right-wing populists at a terrifying rate, we should not assume Ramaphosa is not vulnerable.
In countries like the US and Brazil, figures like Trump and Bolsonaro started out as a joke and suddenly became a serious threat. In both cases, the rise of such disastrous leaders was enabled by a toxic symbiosis between fake news on social media and a mainstream media eschewing basic journalistic standards in its hunt for clicks.
South Africa’s media are no different. As numerous commentators have observed, the EFF has won a massive share of media coverage with a tiny percentage of the vote.
This has fundamentally distorted our public sphere, creating the mistaken impression that demagoguery and gross chauvinism are massively popular. This in turn normalises toxic politics with the result that it can, in the end, become genuinely popular.
The situation is poised to worsen with the rise of a clutch of little parties, all lead by charlatans of the highest order, that are aligned to the pro-corruption politics around Zuma. None have any prospect of significant success at the polls. But, they all have the capacity to make a huge contribution to the ongoing degeneration of our public sphere.
Uncritical reporting on the utterances of people like Hlaudi Motsoeneng, Jimmy Manyi,
Andile Mngxitama and others, all discredited supporters of Zuma, may win the media short term-gain in terms of clicks. After all, controversy does attract attention.
The strategy of creating multiple parties is diabolically brilliant. If all these charlatans were in one party, it would get one bite at the media space cherry. With multiple parties, they get multiple bites and crowd out the decent voices.
If these forces ever aligned with the pro-zuma faction in the ANC, and with the EFF, it would mean the end of our economy, the end of any hope of a developmental state and, of course, the end of media freedom.
There is a real possibility that the media, in its hunt for easy clicks, may be digging its own grave.
Zuma and his acolytes claim that the plunder of the state by a politically connected elite is radical politics in the interests of the people.
That, of course, is balderdash. Every million looted from the state to make a few families rich is a million robbed from ordinary people, including the black working class and the poor. Zuma and his acolytes are the enemy of the black majority. The DA has reached its electoral limit. It has gathered up most of the minority votes, but it has failed, spectacularly, to became a party of the majority.
The EFF is now clearly a project that might have issues with Zuma as a personality but is Zumaist in orientation. And while the majority clearly welcomes Ramaphosa’s commitment to clean up the mess made by Zuma, Ramaphosa offers nothing other than a promise of clean government.
In a society in which millions remain poor, Ramaphosa’s lack of a progressive vision cannot win him sustained support.
The SACP offers no alternative. It is now just a minor player in the pro-ramaphosa faction of the ANC.
What we urgently require is a genuinely progressive alternative so that politics is not just a contest between centrists and corrupt charlatans who claim to speak for the poor.
Numsa’s decision to step into the void in our politics and launch its Workers’ Party is a bold step. With hundreds of thousands of members, the union has a strong foundation from which to launch a party. The question, of course, is whether the union can translate its membership into political support in the few months before the election.
If this party can make a good first showing, it will no longer be possible for the charlatans to present themselves as the only opposition to Ramaphosa’s centrism.
This would go a long distance towards restoring rationality to our public sphere. The best possible result would be for Ramaphosa to improve on Zuma’s last showing, with the Workers’ Party eating into the support of the EFF.
This would enable Ramaphosa to move ahead with his clean-up and for us to start thinking about a viable alternative to neo-liberal centrism.