JAUNDICED EYE

him, the cheerleading looked forced and unconvincing.

It is also wearing threadbare. The man, who, in 2019 was embraced by the corporate sector and middle-classes as the safe pair of hands against the party’s destructive populists, is showing his true colours.

Three years ago, it was the Ramaphosa grouping, vying for the leadership against former president Jacob Zuma’s Radical Economic Transformation faction, that argued against a policy of land expropriation without compensation. The radicals triumphed by the narrowest of margins.

This time, it was Ramaphosa who led the charge. “We must use available means, including the new Expropriation Bill, to accelerate land redistribution.”

To complete Ramaphosa’s expedient about-face and embrace of populism, he backed the nationalisation of the SA Reserve Bank. This was the other issue on which the radicals had pushed in 2019 but it had fallen by the wayside under the pressure of real crises – blackouts, SOEs in financial collapse, attempted insurrections, natural disasters, a surge in criminal violence, and endemic service protests.

Now, according to Ramaphosa, the private ownership of the Reserve Bank is a “historic anomaly” and the people of South Africa should fully own it. The nominal ownership of the bank is, of course, not the real issue. It’s about control of the printing presses.

The independent board has consistently resisted opening the spigots and draining the barrel. A board of ANC deployed cadres won’t, which is why the Treasury, alert to the worst instincts of the party that it serves, is among those who oppose the Reserve Bank’s nationalisation.

It’s ironic that the man whom the country’s political centre viewed as its best defence against populism is pursuing with apparent relish the extremist policies they thought they could count on him opposing. The Radical Economic Transformation group’s best ally turns out to be Ramaphosa.

But as Groucho Marx supposedly said: “These are my principles, and if you don't like them… well, I have others.”