Ramaphosa stuck with his unfulfilled promises
WE CAN separate pathways, one to success and the other to misery and ruin. Common to the pathways is that you require fellow travellers on board. The more you combine your talents, skills, experience and values with others, the more successful you’ll be.
If you bring in cronies to cushion you (empire building), for a little while you’ll know joy but, in the end, tears and blood will be shed.
The latter is the narrative of President Cyril Ramaphosa. What happened to the economic envoy led by Trevor Manuel to source investment from abroad? All he needed was to equip himself with vision (where to?) and mission (how?) driven by moral courage and uncompromising commitment to worthy values. He is stuck with a host of unfulfilled promises and his deficiencies, as a party leader and state president, are all too clear.
Ramaphosa demonstrated selfish ambition in business and politics. A good leader is a good follower. In the Nelson Mandela administration, he left because he couldn’t stomach serving under then former Deputy President Thabo Mbeki. In his business pursuits, he used his political influence to accumulate wealth for himself instead of making more billionaires out of the historically disadvantaged.
In his re-entry into politics, he betrayed his close friend, former caretaker president Kgalema Motlanthe, by jumping on ex-president Jacob Zuma’s slate to become deputy president in 2014. He backed the wrong horse.
He has failed both his party and the country. For these, I don’t see him finishing his first term. You can see he is fatigued. Nonetheless, there are three options open for him: to resign, wait to be pushed out or make the best of a bad job.