Cyril Ramaphosa has in the past few months shown through his sterling performance that the presidency is his destiny, says Max du Preez.
Can you imagine Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa as anyone’s deputy after Jacob Zuma had stepped down? I can’t. What, he’s going to grovel and say “ja baas, nee baas” to Zweli Mkhize? Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma? Baleka Mbete? Jeff Radebe?
Can’t see it happening, sorry.
Oh, there are many reasons given why Ramaphosa won’t ever be president of South Africa. And there’s some validity to most of these.
First off, he’s not Zulu-speaking and there’s a strong sentiment that Zuma’s successor should again be from that language group with its strong ANC support, especially KwaZulu-Natal.
It’s the only region where the ANC’s support has grown over the last decades – from 39 percent in 1994 to 64 percent this year.
But no, the fact that Ramaphosa’s childhood language was Venda doesn’t seem to matter to many.
He’s a multi-millionaire and this is supposed to be his other drawback.
That can’t be a real disadvantage, though, can it? He got his start in business through black economic empowerment – a creation of the ANC.
Nothing wrong with that.
And then he made a success of his business ventures. Good for him. At least we all know he can run a big business, a talent that we don’t know if other presidential contenders have.
Plus, he’s not the only multi-millionaire in the ANC’s top leadership.
Mbete, for instance, was given a R25 million share handout by Goldfields. There are several members of the Zuma clan who became multi-millionaires in the last decade.
Ramaphosa’s faux pas was to bid on an expensive buffalo at a public auction.
It would in fact have been a good investment for a game farmer to buy a TB-free buffalo cow with exceptional DNA, but he was outbid by another farmer.
But his opponents did use the incident to discredit him and he did apologise for being “insensitive”.
His e-mails and phone calls to ask for stronger police action just before the Marikana Massacre in 2012 (as a non-executive board member of Lonmin) are the biggest albatross around his neck.
Still, if the police hadn’t killed 34 miners on that day, his communications wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. And nobody seriously believes that killing miners in cold blood was what he wanted to see.
The EFF has not let an opportunity pass to remind him of his “complicity” in the massacre – using one of its senior leaders, Dali Mpofu, to stoke the fires in the Marikana Commission.
But I can’t see Judge Ian Farlam apportioning much blame to Ramaphosa in his final report.
Ramaphosa is the EFF’s Enemy Number Two after Zuma, because it was Ramaphosa who finally kicked Julius Malema, Floyd Shivambu et al out of the ANC. It strongly counts in Ramaphosa’s favour that he hadn’t been accused of any financial corruption and that his personal life is above approach.
Not one of the other contenders for the presidency can say this.
I also read recently that Ramaphosa’s big problem was that he was perceived as being endorsed by “liberals” and the business community, and that this was rendering him “suspect” in the eyes of the ANC. This is certainly too crude to be relevant. What, you can only progress as an ANC leader if white people and business despise you? This is the ANC, not the EFF, remember.
Perhaps it is time to remind ourselves that the new president of the ANC is elected by ANC members through their structures, not by ANC sympathisers or the public.
The people who believe in the ANC’s “historical mission” know very well that the party would have to govern substantially better, grow the economy and thus job opportunities and clean up its image of corruption to avoid defeat at the 2019 elections.
The extensive system of patronage that Zuma created will play a role, of course, but even its beneficiaries must realise that it will mean nothing if the ANC were to lose power .
And here’s the rub, in my view. The ANC’s delegates to an elective congress know what they have in Ramaphosa.
They know he’s got more charisma and people skills than anyone else in the party leadership – he is more presidential.
They know he’s the Great Persuader and a brilliant tactician. They know he’ll be the opposite of Zuma: he will be respected and admired by South Africans and the rest of the world.
Perhaps I’m wrong. But then tell me: how will the future presidency be wrenched from Ramaphosa’s hands after his performance and prominence of the last few months and the months to come? For the first time since 2008 the ANC has a real leader.
Ramaphosa believes it is his destiny to be president.
He’s been underestimated before, remember?
* Max du Preez is an author and columnist.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.