One would not be amiss to think of President Cyril Ramaphosa as a man walking a tightrope between two confounding extremes. One minute he is being indulged to a red carpet shindig in Britain. King Charles III is going to great lengths to ensure that the Buffalo regards Buckingham Palace as a home away from home and the King as a brother from another mother as he regales Ramaphosa with greetings in Mzansi vernacular. Sawubona, molo, dumela; no effort is spared to win Ramaphosa’s glee. There’s fine dining, gun salutes, tours of the monarch’s crib, man, the whole shebang.
Barely a fortnight later, though, SA’s First Citizen is facing the guillotine in his own backyard, his foes priming the blade, ready to snuff out the New Dawn. No more “your excellency,” no “comrade president,” and if they get their way the incumbent might soon be licking his wounds at the Phala Phala crime scene come Jesus’s birthday. Calls going unanswered, no festive season SMSs from the cadres given how lonely and cold we’ve been told life is outside the ANC.
The finest thriller writers would be hard-pressed to think up a more riveting plotline. Here is a man whose ascension to the presidency was cunningly handed to him by some do-or-die blindsiding. Despite dissenters fighting tooth and nail to bar the door, an unexpected sleight of hand by deputy president DD “the cat” Mabuza bumped the billionaire candidate to the apex of the ruling party hierarchy. Following decades of sticky fingers fiddling with the state cookie jars, everybody was gatvol to their eyeballs, and here was a filthy-rich tycoon who surely would never stoop so low. As one of the drafters of our revered Constitution and a lawyer himself, he would always err to the side of accountability, constitutionalism and all those other undergirdings of democracy. At least that was the infomercial pitched to the electorate.
From the podium in that 2019 election campaign Ramaphosa would invoke the lyrics of the late Bra Hugh Masekela, pleading with voters to “thuma mina” – send me. To create jobs, to ensure a better life for all. If you send me, those fingered for serious graft and corruption would face the music in court and ultimately “chisel” serious time in the company of heavily-tattooed prison gang members. So enticing was the spiel that after the so-called “nine wasted years” what had been predominantly pessimistic opinion pieces were beaming with enthusiasm and the Buffalo suddenly became the posterboy of an ANC embarked on a journey towards self-correction.
When it was all starting to sound a little too good to be true, well, ja, up stepped Arthur Frasier with a bombshell that would rock the Thuma Mina boat to the hull. The former spy boss wielded intel that was reminiscent of a Martin Scorsese script; dollar bills stashed in furniture, an inside connection, dark-alley strongarming of alleged culprits and the President suddenly looked like a shady Godfather of the underworld than a saintly guardian of the rule of law. In the aftermath, a Section 89 independent assessment panel report has found that he may have violated the constitution and abused his oath of office.
Now a week to the ANC’s Elective Conference, the news could not have come more opportunely to his enemies. They have the self-righteous President exactly where they want him; compromised, unsettled, the squeaky clean visage wiped clean. Now would be the perfect time to go for the jugular, use these damning findings to discredit him and hopefully see him go home to spend the rest of his days munching on free quarter pounders among his Ankole stock.
Deep into the aftermath of the scandal, it was reported that the President would be tendering his resignation by way of a “family meeting.”
The news sent an unnerving chill. The Rand staggered, civil society were nervously biting their nails and the press – for the most part lenient on Ramaphosa – were unsure whether to begin on his political obituary. Some minutes-to-midnight counsel on the part of his allies convinced the President to dig in his heels, challenge the Section 89 report, thus buying himself time in the lead-up to the Conference.
Known to be a grandmaster of the “long game” there are those adamant that the transparent route of coming clean would’ve earned more favours for the man. From the get-go, take the nation into his confidence by maybe raising his hand to say, “ok fellow South Africans, I messed up,” hang his head in shame and say sorry. It would not be farfetched to presume that his confession would’ve been met by some compassion. For all his sins – even unremarkable performance – in certain quarters the question persists; “if not him then who?” Though wary of creating a personality cult, the fact of the matter is that the ruling party is an identity parade lined by some tainted characters and has become an incubator of scoundrels and obscene incompetence. Having a paragon of some form of clean governance, even if wrapped in a lone individual, is something that they must surely realise is of some benefit to the cause.
Markets look favourably on Ramaphosa. Despite his trade unionist background, in practicality he is not so much a traditional working class advocate than a BEE billionaire constantly on the outlook to possible business ventures. If one needed further evidence of his capitalist, not-overly-troubled-by-the-plight-of-the-poor disposition, one need only look at how he, billionaire status and all, did not hesitate to personally retrench workers on one of his farms when trading conditions got tough back in 2019. How, when public servants were pleading for a pay raise, he simply turned the other way and figured it fit that a 3% increase would be better suited to his ministers and provincial office bearers who now take home around R2 million a year. As a cherry on top, the President would further ensure that these anointed ones were promptly furnished with power generators while simple you and I were left to languish in the dark thanks to severe rolling blackouts. In the midst of a deadly Covid-19 pandemic, his government determined that a paltry R350 grant was sufficient to see the poorest of the poor through the hardships.
Meanwhile as these senseless political dramas played themselves out among the powers that be, the commoners would’ve been racking their heads as to who will be the last man standing after the Conference bloodbath. But perhaps we’d be asking the wrong question; “who” rather than “what.” Who will win, when the more critical inquiry should be what they can deliver? Despite that – given our political history – we are a somewhat politicised nation, in the main, our politics are rather mediocre, mostly reduced to the parternalistic politics of the laager. Voting is generally reflective of these patterns, based, as it is, on historical and racial loyalties where the politics of ideas and progress are secondary to those of factionalism and personalities.
As a result, these skirmishes between the bigwigs inherently bear absolutely no interest for the poor. The only people who stand to gain anything are those whose victory at Nasrec will bring them power and the key to state resources. Remember, with great power comes great privileges; government tenders for the in-laws, directorships for siblings, a “created” post for umakhwapheni – that’s mistress if you didn’t know – and perhaps an admin post for the makhwapheni who’s still playing hard to get. After all “siphethe la” – we run the show – as the potbellied ones have been known to boast.
For the rest of us, though, irrespective of which faction should triumph, there will still be loadshedding, unemployment, an inept public service. Public hospitals will still be filthy, dangerous places where you have an even chance of dying waiting in a queue as you do of getting hit by a stray bullet in the Cape Flats on a payday Friday night. Public officials – from national level down to the lay buy councillor – will still be on the take. The economy is likely to maintain a negligible increase, millions will continue scrounging off social welfare and potholes will only multiply as once well-maintained cities and towns descend into decrepitude.
This is what you get from poorly-implemented politics of redress that negate progress and essentially mean that you will always be a step behind even amongst other developing countries and that eventually you will find yourself surpassed even by these countries. That is the downside of these self-serving battles; they lack the foresight of the long-term as they are preoccupied only with where my next meal will come from.
As for what we can expect at the Conference one cannot say for sure except that this will likely unravel into a Polokwane Reloaded. Those who have been asked to step aside by the ruling party naturally have a bone to grind, are mobilising, planning their vengeance. Some of the faces will have changed but the rules of engagement will doubtlessly remain the same. Blood on the floor, heckling from the plenary, newly-composed dirges elevating this candidate and burning the other at the stake. Refuse bags filled with palm-greasing money, horse-trading; this will be the fight not of the soul of the ANC but of one faction over another. It will not be a fight to win the election and ensure “a better life for all” than to validate inflated egos and ambitious personalities. Essentially it will not be a battle for the wellbeing of lowly you and me. But all we can do is look on from the sideline hoping that in a party riddled by some many tainted individuals, the one with the least sins will prevail. A miserable choice by any estimates but one must work with what one has.
PM, a I like to call you, Phakamisa, this is a wonderfully enlightening, entertaining and informative contribution: and even more so coming just before yesterday’s parliament gathering here in Cape Town. While we have a water cut today here in HoutBay – rightly inconvenient for infrastructure repairs for fire hydrant servicing – yet this remains a bubble of note and you fellows up there in Colesberg can see very clearly from that N2 midpoint Toverberg or Coleskop or Umsobomvu Heights… Regards while on leave, your farmer journo, Maeder Osler.
Cyril and Gorham are killing Mzantsi
The minister only targets black executives and can’t do the same thing at Eskom because those in charge of the power utility are white,” one senior executive said.
The source added that Gordhan had frustrated Phakamile Radebe while he was Eskom executive, but failed to lift a finger over André de Ruyter and Jan Oberholzer, who had the worst track record.
“Radebe was frustrated and forced to resign from Eskom, and he was doing far better than De Ruyter and Oberholzer,” he said.
Minister Pravin Gordhan. Picture: David Ritchie
The executive added that the list of all black executives and officials that had been allegedly targeted by Gordhan in his quest to implement his “master plan to sell the SOEs” is endless.
“The plan is to weaken the SOEs, underfund them, and get rid of the top executives so it can be easy to sell them for a song to his cronies.”
Ntshihlele told The Sunday Independent this week that he was also being “targeted” by Gordhan. Before Rabede was forced out at Eskom, Gordhan started with former SAA chief executive Vuyani Jarana, who was forced to resign less than two years into the job, allegedly after he was “frustrated” by the minister.
SAA was sold for R51 in February this year to Takatso Consortium, which was allegedly “hand-picked by the minister in an irregular and unlawful manner”.
Gordhan’s hand in the sale of the SAA deal was exposed by suspended Department of Public Enterprises director-general Kgathatso Tlhakudi, who also lodged a grievance against the minister last week.
Tlhakudi claims in his court papers that Gordhan suspended him when he “started seeing me as an obstacle to the programme that he was embarking on of disposing of state-owned enterprises and their assets in a fraudulent and corrupt manner”.
Tlhakudi last week wrote a protected disclosure letter to Speaker of Parliament Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and President Cyril Ramaphosa asking them to investigate Gordhan for corruption.
Tlhakudi also believes he is one of the black executives who are targeted by Gordhan to weaken the SOEs to sell them for a song to “a few privileged individuals who were favoured by the minister in an irregular manner”.
Tlhakudi told the chairperson of his disciplinary hearing, Advocate Rataga Ramawele SC, last Friday that Gordhan allegedly has a “master plan to sell the SOE to his cronies”.
In his protected disclosure letter to Mapisa-Nqakula and Ramaphosa, Tlhakudi said the sale of SAA was “ill-conceived”.
“The SAA transaction was now, in my considered view, a template for how the rest of the SOE portfolio was intended to be disposed (of) to the detriment of the South African citizens, who are the ultimate shareholder of the state-owned assets,” the letter states.