President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent firing of Andrew Whitfield suggests a veiled personal acknowledgement that time may not be on his side if he wishes to effectively carry out the in-house mandate placed on him by the CR17s eight years ago. Furthermore, the sacking of said Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry might indicate that the First Citizen nowadays draws his counsel from a wider pool, which includes people who aren’t afraid to play with fire, or to stir the hornet’s nest.
Individuals who, unlike Ramaphosa, are wary of the long game – find it a little too pandering, too much like crooking the knee to a DA that is increasingly associated with baaskap within these radical quarters. That is to say, the sort of cadres who are eager to call out all ‘counter-revolutionary’ tendencies like neo-liberalism or being told what to do by the, uhm, ‘racist’ kind of people.
In the face of a highly contested pre-election conference in 2017, ‘unity’ and ‘renewal’ were the ANC’s payoff lines. They were peddled by every party hack although it was – even back then – abundantly clear that the party was so severely fractured from within that there was no coming back from it. Optimists within then rallied around the idea of the comrades working to try to find each other, whilst the pragmatists were merely looking for the guy who stood to lose the least in ceding power – if it ever came to that.
Ramaphosa’s early stint as president showed an ineffectual, indecisive head who led by consensus simply because he seemed almost chronically noncommital. Whilst some rushed to diss him, with one scathing writer reducing him to a ‘spokesperson,’ others pointed out his ‘long game.’ History will show that from the time he took the reigns from Jacob Zuma, there was nothing at a socio-economic level to suggest there were tangible benefits in the works for ordinary South Africans. And by the time Covid struck, we were back in ‘nine wasted years’ mode again – looting and scandals at every turn.
Fast forward to the present and the ANC’s (now forced into an unexpected partnership with various parties) sins have caught up with them. For the man tasked with ushering an intra-ANC transfer of power, it’s a mind f**k not least because one cannot say how the numbers will stand come 2027 and 2029. May 2024 has flipped the script on its head, catching those at the top flat-footed and unawares. This means that now they must learn to do things impromptu, on the fly, because nobody knows what tomorrow has in store.
What pundits seemed most preoccupied by in the aftermath of Whitfield’s firing was why? But the more pertinent question would’ve been ‘who’ will come in his place? Or whether, indeed, this might be the prelude to a broader Cabinet reshuffle, which if Ramaphosa’s implicit gestures are anything to go by might well see the DA losing a few more high positions which will likely be filled not necessarily by ANC individuals but the smaller parties if only to avert a situation where the ANC is accused of power-hogging.
If there’s one thing the DA has done – to its detriment – it was to flash their teeth too often but not biting anybody. Nowadays everyone knows that they are so spooked by the prospect of the bellicose Progressive Caucus worming its way into the GNU that they’ll put up with all the k*k if only to shore up the center. They will call infuriated press conferences, issue gatvol ultimatums but Ramaphosa’s advisors seem to be calling their bluff knowing that – in the face of an ANC union with the ultra-lefties – it amounts to nothing but hot air and playing to the gallery.
By first insisting that the president fires ministers implicated in corruption only to do a U-turn and saying they’ll remain in the GNU, the DA are responding precisely in the manner in which it has done in the partnership: it heads to the courts or bla-bla-blas awhile but turns up for work at the next parliamentary sitting. They clearly lack the confidence to carry their threats through, come what may. When they nervously dived headlong into the ANC’s statement of intent last year, they unwittingly set themselves up to being a pushover, albeit one that murmured a few retaliatory refrains before sitting down and going along with the business of the day.
Sure, there wasn’t much time for hardcore bargaining post-May 2024 but in Helen Zille’s strongly-worded but altogether actionless statements, it was clear to an ANC all-too-accustomed to high-stakes negotiating that they had before them adversaries who were au fait in beaurocratic administration/governance but were otherwise clueless in the cutthroat game of do-or-die negotiating. And, with Zille cosplaying the whip-in-hand dominatrix, no one can say they expected anything that wouldn’t leave resentment and regret to all in sundry, her own colleagues especially.
A Tony Leon – astute but cordially able to make a proper account of himself without having to shove his cudgeol down people’s throats or to sound like a madam – would’ve been a far more bagable negotiator. Unapologetic though he may be, he may have gone much further with the comrades. The comrades may seem out for blood, but in truth they are a group of closeted capitalists who pretend to be still in umzabalazo – the people’s cause – only because, like Stellenbosch, a popular uprising doesn’t bode well for them. Chances are, they’ll probably be pilloried first.
This is where the DA, if it had a semblance of conscience would be mourning Herman Mashaba’s walkout. This is where they will regret their cocked-up strategy to get rid of Mmusi Maimane. Heck, even Athol Trolip would’ve been a versatile knight on this chess board riddled with kings and queens who move too much and too little whilst too high-browed to concede that they lack the humility of a bishop or the forthrightness of a rook.
In this game, Steenhuisen can do very little but prove to be a very good headboy, a jock who ticks all the right boxes, says the right things, in a blazer, but has been living too long on the other side of the tracks to even manage a convincing sentence in broken isiXhosa. Xhosa here being a metaphor: he doesn’t know how to speak to the hearts of the men seated across the table and he comes from a life so disparate from theirs that he might be the Baas John that some say he is on the socials.
You think I’m just randomly clutching at racial and cultural tropes from thin air? Well … ‘Niyenzani kwiDA ungumuntu omyama recently,’ (what are you doing in the DA as a black person) asked a prominent broadcaster and podcaster recently? This comes on the back of a story that caused a minor scandal for the DA. Apparently Karabo Khakhau, a spiritual healer and DA MP, found herself privately addressed by the party whip George Michalakis for sitting on the floor and burping – an act linked to her calling – during a caucus meeting. In the DA’s infinite wisdom, the seanse warranted a ‘quasi-disciplinary hearing,’ this in a majority black country where the constitution guarantees cultural beliefs. The podcaster’s verdict: an African party would’ve understood, instead the DA expressed that her conduct was inappropriate. A small misunderstanding, you say? But a pile of small understandings soon gathers up a smell you can’t easily wash away.
But back to Ramaphosa, the man tasked with ushering what will come next, for the ANC and the country. There are those who say his election was less because he was the best man for the job more than he seemed like the safest choice in a factionalized, fundamentally divided ANC, manned by lieutenants so power-hungry they might have looked the other way when blood was spilled and balaklavad iinkabi were sending people to sleep with the fishes.
When in power, went the logic, the billionaire would at least focus on the impossible task of unifying the movement whilst trying to find the ideal candidate to pass the baton to.
Its recent elective conferences have laid bare the crooked, irredeemable state of the ANC. This is a party that has degenerated to seed – many faces, very few with an honest bone in them. Ramaphosa’s furtive mandate was less to be a president of the country than to be the president who’d anoint the best successor for the ANC presidency. Hence we’re told he’s earnestly looking to hand the baton over, preferably to a woman. That is the ANC’s biggest headache now, probably superceding the actual running of the country: finding the best leader in a room where every possible candidate has smallanyana skeletons tumbling out the closet.
Given it’s tentacles in the labour union movement, underground lobbying, in the ability to woo foreign support, collude with disparate regimes, the ANC has been long enough in the diplomacy game to realise that the enemy of my friend is not necessarily always my enemy. For the ANC it’s a matter of old principles, for the DA a matter of morality, and the two can be mutually exclusive. Morally, Mbeki should’ve never supported the demagogue Mugabe. But in principle, them having once waged a similar liberation struggle it would’ve been a betrayal to turn his back on a man who’d stood by him when most of the world saw the ANC cause as an assembly of terrorists.
So, where the DA got much of their politics from university, the ANC cut their teeth through mobilising, real interactions and getting up on the podium to address people. The latter of course may be wanting intelectually but it runs rings around the former in as far as robust engagement, mobilising and reaching the grassroots. It also means a certain level of patience where the other guys are sweating bullets whilst nervously trying to figure out what hand you’ll play next. Whitfield is gone and the DA seems to have come to terms with his fate. What, is, however, clear now is that the ANC is in a state of free fall. Ramaphosa’s position is untenable. He doesn’t seem any closer to finding a successor worthy of the olive oil. It’s no surprise then to hear names like Patrice Motsepe being thrown around. And if indeed he is looking for a woman, he no doubt agonises whether such a choice will be able to stand up to the inevitable power struggles. More than anybody, he knows that those can wear a man down. You’d remember that at one point, they’d gotten so overwhelming that Ramaphosa himself wanted so desperately to step down.
Image: DA Federal Chairperson Helen Zille speaking infront of a court where the party was laying criminal charges against higher education minister Nobuhle Nkabane. Source: Democratic Alliance Facebook page.