Every time the deputy president speaks, his followers are gripped by excitement. But what is he really saying? Or is he leading by following? Is the tide more important than the principle?
Cyril Ramaphosa’s speech to the SA Communist Party conference last week sent the media into apoplexies of delight and affirmation. Headlines like "Cyril’s slam-dunk speech" and "Ramaphosa 2.0" soon followed.
In truth though, he said nothing new, he rarely does. It is just that the need to believe has many in its grip. Any excuse to see the definite in the ambiguous will do. And no-one benefits more from this affliction than Ramaphosa.
Let’s call it Ramathusiasm.
"If you don’t vote, the boers will come back to control us," Ramaphosa said in 2013. It was a revealing statement, now long forgotten. Part of Ramathusiasm is the conviction that he is a potential tonic for all the rampant demagoguery that defines the politics of Jacob Zuma and his ilk.
To believe that would be a mistake. He might demonstrate a little more self-control — but the base instinct to populism is there, just below the surface.
While Ramaphosa may not be Zuma, he is complicit in the damage Zuma has wrought
"You should really see this, when we go to Davos, we all wear our colourful scarves and there is no other country that has claimed that space like we have ... wearing that scarf on [sic] itself just begins to make your message cohesive." That was Ramaphosa earlier this year, in response to a parliamentary question. He was asked about how the ANC could best represent SA’s interests to investors when it was so fundamentally divided about ideas like radical economic transformation.
Ramathusiasts would have it he is a democrat, serious about accountability in a way Zuma isn’t. There is little evidence for this; he treats parliament with almost the same contempt the president does. The same kind of inanity marks his obfuscation.
"I for one will not remain quiet," Ramaphosa said to the SACP, with reference to the Gupta family. The media lapped it up. His standard line on the subject is to call for a judicial commission of inquiry. It’s a clever piece of rhetoric allows him to appear decisive; simultaneously, vague enough to avoid any real confrontation with the powers that be. After all, Zuma himself says he supports such a call.
Ramathusiasm would have it that he is a bulwark against corruption and maladministration.
He isn’t Zuma; that much is true. But then he isn’t Eliot Ness either. He is complicit in the damage Zuma has wrought, and he has kept quiet about it all. And much more besides, going further back in time. On all the great modern tragedies — Zimbabwe, HIV/Aids, Eskom, Nkandla — there is no singular Ramaphosa school of principled thought or deed.
This appears to illustrate that he is not a man of action, but of words — and selective words at that. Ramathusiasts cannot tell the difference.
There is the idea of Cyril Ramaphosa and then there is Cyril Ramaphosa. Never shall the two meet — outside of Ramathusiasm, that is. It is a religion augmented by SA’s collective goldfish memory and the disproportionate power that the politics of personality commands.
"Some among us were so gullible, believing in slogans that were crafted in London and brought here to confuse us," Ramaphosa said of Bell Pottinger and its white monopoly capital propaganda. Perhaps. But some of us weren’t — and Ramaphosa probably counts himself among them.
But really, white monopoly capital is just one of a hundred nonsense phrases particular to the ANC’s universe: "turnaround strategy", "cadre deployment", "batho pele", "the national development plan", "radical economic transformation". He is on board with them all. They are all failures.
He isn’t Zuma; that much is true. But then he isn’t Eliot Ness either. He is complicit in the damage Zuma has wrought, and he has kept quiet about it all. And much more besides, going further back in time
Former president Thabo Mbeki was on board with a lot of them too. In fact, he even produced half of them. But then he was Mbeki. Not Zuma. So that was okay. There is a lot of that about Ramaphosa. It is the unsaid assumption underpinning most Ramathusiasm: anything but Zuma.
Of course, there was a time when the saying went, anything but Mbeki. That sort of binary thinking is how societies make the worst decisions.
Where Zuma had Hlaudi Motsoeneng, Mbeki had Snuki Zikalala; where Zuma had Riah Phiyega, Mbeki had Jackie Selebi; where Zuma had Dudu Myeni, Mbeki had Coleman Andrews.
The personality of the ANC president is important. But that person can only emphasise some pre-existing trait, inherent to the organisation’s culture. For Mbeki it was authoritarianism; for Zuma, demagogic self-interest. For Ramaphosa that trait would appear to be compromise; the science of nothingness. But whatever, the ANC remains constant.
The only real difference is that where Mbeki had Trevor Manuel, Zuma has Malusi Gigaba. And it’s on that particular pivot that so much Ramathusiasm turns.
If Ramaphosa is all on board with radical economic transformation, it is difficult to understand why he wouldn’t be on board for Gigaba as well, and for all he represents.
Rather than principle, for Ramaphosa it’s all about the tide, and how best to position himself in relation to it. He is a negotiator at heart.
Of course, arbitrators have an important role to play in society, in politics especially. After all, politics is the art of the possible. Leaders worth their salt must be able to give and take. But leaders cannot be only arbitrators — they must stand for something. Without that they become little more than a facilitator for whatever impulse is in the ascendency.
It can seem impressive, to stand above the fray and pronounce on events with a detached wisdom. But it is to say everything and nothing; to stand up for virtue but to accommodate vice. It is to lead by following.
Ramaphosa regularly wins awards. Just this week he received a lifetime achievement award for leadership. But what, exactly, is the substance of this great leadership? To lead, one must have a vision and compel people to move from one place to another.
Of course, the Guptas have proven a helpful crutch for Ramaphosa. So preoccupied is SA with that family and identity politics, the monumental crisis that is the ailing economy is simply glossed over.
Make no mistake: the economy is on the precipice. Systematically it has been driven to the edge — sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly — by a party that remains clueless about growth, how to generate it and the demands of a modern, internationally integrated economy.
But so long as we have outed a public relations firm in the UK, that’s all okay then. And so long as Ramaphosa takes a hard line on the Guptas, he is the man for the job.
That’s Ramathusiasm for you. Anything but Zuma.
Just as with Ramaphosa, there is an idea of the ANC, and then there is the ANC. And never shall the two meet.
In well-established, functional modern democracies, a society looks to the leader of the opposition when faced with crisis and policy turmoil. But not in SA. Here, we look to the disease for a cure.
Ramaphosa knows this; it is why he exists at all. All he has to do is convince the masses he is not infected and the gates to heaven will open.
Bell Pottinger invented white monopoly capital, in the same way that Ramaphosa invented the idea of a judicial commission of inquiry as a serious response to state capture.
The former we turned on viciously when it was revealed we were deceived; the latter we embraced with enthusiasm. But it’s the same game.
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