Ramaphosa must act now or RET forces will take over

THE main reason for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s continued high levels of public support, considerably beyond the electoral popularity of his party, is fear.

Fear that his departure would mean that the state capture faction – cloaked under the Radical Economic Transformation (RET) label – would regain control, with all the attendant ghastly implications.

Corruption would resume unchecked. There would be a looting free-for-all as the cadres scrambled to grab what they could before South Africa was finally bankrupted.

The economic changes that are a survival imperative will be postponed or rejected as unnecessary.

Populist measures, such as expropriation without compensation of private property and the diversion of private pension funds into state projects, will gather pace.

In other words, there will be a complete and utter Zimbabwe-style meltdown. In other words, exactly what is already happening.

Given Ramaphosa’s manifest inability to act decisively, all that’s at issue here is the speed at which the disaster unfolds.

The president cannot make the economic changes that are necessary because he dare not defy the union movement and SACP that got him elected. He cannot act effectively against corruption since the entire party appears to be implicated in it.

As ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule put it, in response to public outrage over vastly inflated Covid-19 emergency health relief tenders going to the politically connected: “Tell me of one leader of the ANC who has not done business with government?”

It’s an astonishingly provocative response by Magashule. He is basically saying that Ramaphosa is just the latest in a long line of ANC presidents who are corrupt. Ramaphosa has neither denied such culpability nor has he taken any disciplinary action against Magashule. One must then conclude that either Ramaphosa is as ethically challenged as are so many of his colleagues or that he cannot or will not rock the party boat.

Since there has been no evidence of Ramaphosa being a crook, the problem is one of presidential paralysis. He is paralysed because, for Ramaphosa, “cannot” and “will not” are the same thing.

As he has repeatedly stated, the most important thing for him is not to preside over the break-up of the party. And despite two-and-a-half years as president, his avowedly reformist faction has still not been able to wrest control from former president Jacob Zuma’s RET cronies.

On the contrary, judging by the recent behaviour of Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, the woman he narrowly pipped at the post in the 2018 leadership election, his stature and options within the party have diminished. While Ramaphosa has wafted about during the past months trying to look statesmanlike and in control, Dlamini Zuma is the one who appeared and behaved as though she were, in fact, in charge.

Most humiliatingly, the militantly anti-smoking Dlamini Zuma peremptorily countermanded his announcement lifting the ban on smoking, exposing him to public derision. Police Minister Bheki Cele has rampaged through the lockdown months like a spaghetti western baddie. Yet Ramaphosa has not issued a word of rebuke.

Since Ramaphosa is unlikely to undergo the personality change necessary to take control, his professed worst nightmare, a split in the ANC, would do exactly that.

It would be an event of seismic proportions. Previous breakaways from the ANC have been in the nature of splinters rather than splits.

An ANC split down the middle, now, would likely lead to the RET forces, led by Dlamini Zuma, making common cause with the EFF. That would conceivably lead to a far-left coalition forming the next government. But, equally, it could see the Ramaphosa reformists in the ANC aligning – or supplanting – the DA and formations such as those recently founded by the likes of Herman Mashaba and Mmusi Maimane.

Such speculation is of limited use. The point to be made is simply that the economic and social pressures, aggravated by the pandemic and lockdown, are enormous. Something has to give and the ideological logjam that is paralysing the government has to be broken.

Ramaphosa is getting weaker within the tripartite administration, not stronger. Unless he acts soon, the RET forces will be emboldened enough to act against him.