Cyril Ramaphosa at war (... but does he know it?)

To prevail, every powerful myth needs an equally strong contending tale if it wants to enjoy serious longevity — twists, turns, tension, all the materials that keep the protagonist and the antagonist relevant. Cyril Ramaphosa’s New Dawn, sold to South Africans more than two years ago, has proven to be just that: another myth.

It was a promise wrapped in sugary bonbons, and delivered with the slickest of messages, as the answer to all SA’s ills.

The Gupta family, the parasitic and invasive alien roots from which the Jacob Zuma presidential stem sprung, were already established as the villains in the drama from which Ramaphosa would rescue the land of Nelson Mandela. That was the Nasrec moment in December 2017.

It’s now 20 months later, and we are told there is a strong "fightback", either engineered by, or done on behalf of, the interests of the Gupta and Zuma gang. Only, the purveyors of this "fightback" story are the same disciples that sold the "New Dawn" yarn.

Ask why there are no tangible economic reforms on the go, and they will retort that the "fightback is strong". Flip that coin and you will see a potentially different narrative: the New Dawn is weak or distracted.

So, to play devil’s advocate, let’s look briefly at the counterpoint: the existence of a fightback. The fightback is epitomised by the actions of public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane and the myriad cases she is "investigating". Mkhwebane loses every one of them once they reach the courts. But her actions, we are told, benefit the bad boys of our public lives. And she is aided by throngs of supporters, mainly militarised on social media.

But a legitimate question is: how does this virtual army prevent the president from delivering the New Dawn?

Take, for example, Ramaphosa’s biggest announcements, in February. They concerned the restructuring of Eskom, acknowledged as the single biggest risk to the economy. Yet it took six months for the government to even reveal the name of the person to do this task, Freeman Nomvalo. So underwhelming was this choice that few remembered his name, or recognised his image when it was shown on TV.

Was Ramaphosa’s choice swayed by Twitter trolls? Did they prevent the government from finding a ballsy finance or engineering guru to do a demolition job on the power utility? Probably not.

There are many other disturbing examples regarding the surprising impotence of the Ramaphosa reform era. In October last year, the president promised a bold plan to revitalise the economy: visas for exceptionally skilled foreign workers would be as easy to get as Lotto tickets, and tourists from big markets such as China and India would flock to SA.

But almost a year later, the first batch is yet to arrive. What’s the holdup? Here again, it becomes difficult to blame Mkhwebane and the Twitter trolls.

The delays in sorting out our state companies, with Eskom’s R420bn debt right at the front, have also been crippling. One idea, hatched last year to solve our short-term problems, was to create a structure allowing the banks to lend R30bn to the state, without requiring any government guarantees. The way it would work was that the banks would create and own a special purpose vehicle that would lend the money to state entities, knowing full well the risk of not being paid back. But the idea died a slow death. Lungisa Fuzile (former Treasury director-general, now at Standard Bank) and Maria Ramos (former Absa CEO) saw right through this game.

But again, do we attribute the delays on this matter to Zuma, Mkhwebane and company?

In reality, there is very little stopping Ramaphosa from making key appointments and reviving public institutions, says Mcebisi Ndletyana, a politics professor at the University of Johannesburg.

Ndletyana says there is growing frustration with Ramaphosa’s pace of change. "The process to recover the money stolen, to rebuild the National Prosecuting Authority, Eskom and SAA, is rather slow and there is growing public impatience from a public that wants to see justice and retribution," he says.

It’s clear the business sector is frustrated. This month, lobby group Business Unity SA (Busa) released an exasperated statement, bemoaning the fact that "tough decisions are not being made".

Speaking to the FM last week, Busa president Sipho Pityana said the ANC had become "parochial, inward-looking and consumed by internal battles [despite] changes in the world" and this was causing "the marginalisation of the country and the economy to the detriment of us all".

To a large extent, he said, politicians became consumed with getting "the numbers onside and muscle out somebody else in order to be in a position of power" — which completely ignored the real issues of "how we should position this economy and this country".

Nedbank CEO Mike Brown made a similar point at his bank’s results presentation a few weeks ago. "Significantly more urgency is required to institute structural reforms to stem the economic and fiscal deterioration currently being experienced in the SA economy," he said.

The frustration about the lack of accountability is worsened by the front-page stories detailing brazen theft of state money.

Ramaphosa becomes the target of this anger at a lack of accountability because he is "expected to create quick change", says Ndletyana.

But Ramaphosa is between a rock and a hard place: he can hardly try to expedite prosecutions as that would be seen as interfering in an area that should be independent. His problems in the party are deep, insiders and analysts argue.

Another view — from a leftist formation that backs the president — is that Ramaphosa has notched up significant victories over the past 18 months, which are too significant to gloss over. The axing of Tom Moyane as SA Revenue Services commissioner was one, and the appointment of Shamila Batohi as national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) was another. Firing former deputy NDPP Nomgcobo Jiba and special director Lawrence Mrwebi was also no small deal, as Zuma had for years refused to institute inquiries into their fitness to hold office. Both were involved in politically sensitive prosecutorial decisions linked, in one way or another, back to Zuma.

Reconfiguring the State Security Agency, which was seen as being politically abused during the Zuma decade, was also regarded as a victory. The anti-Ramaphosa grouping is, however, much louder, and its members have used social media to spread their messages, whether based on fact or not. To fight them, the source adds, the fight against corruption merely has to be intensified.

Political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi has characterised the New Dawn as the new yawn. Matshiqi sees this as the product of a binary myth that the battle is between the "good" and "bad" agents in our body politic.

In reality, he says, it’s a battle between "angels with horns and devils with halos".

The political mess in the ANC has become a national crisis, says Matshiqi.

"A feature of the ANC crisis [is] the fact that those in leadership positions cannot focus on the task at hand because they are fighting political battles and fighting for political survival," he says.

"There is an extent to which SA is being misdirected from that which is more important — turning the performance of the economy around and ameliorating the socioeconomic conditions of many South Africans."

The problem is, while the party remains in a semipermanent state of conflict and paralysis, any plans to improve the economy don’t enjoy priority status. This is visible — even to those who track the country’s developments from afar, and have the ability to influence investment decisions.

One of those is Peter Attard Montalto, the head of research at Intellidex, who says it was always expected that the Ramaphosa cleanup would start slowly after the May 8 election, paving the way for pro-growth reforms. Instead, "the level of fightback has been fiercer and come earlier" than anyone expected and it has "created distraction for the presidency", he says.

Attard Montalto echoes Matshiqi’s sentiments on the distraction caused by the ANC’s internal issues. Since May, he says, we have been surprised by the following:

• The level of fightback has come earlier than next year’s ANC national general council (NGC), which was unexpected;

• There has been less reform than we expected of any type (positive or negative), given Ramaphosa’s inability to deploy political capital, while wrestling the functioning of the state into gear;

• It has become clear that the presidency is seeing reform in a much longer "10-year governance master plan" outlook for two terms in office. But this ignores the risk that unless the economy turns first, there may not be a second term;

• There has been too much kicking-the-can-down-the-road, especially around choices to be made on Eskom’s interim CEO, its chief restructuring officer and debt issues. This was evident after Ramaphosa’s end-May cabinet lekgotla;

• Sentiment has deteriorated rapidly based on the lack of action, and repetitive rhetoric; and

• The fiscal problems have become more apparent to people, raising the issue of a possible bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which has been overdone.

Attard Montalto says Ramaphosa’s cleanup will continue — but slowly. "Reforms will indeed be largely one step forward, one step back ... meaning a much slower recovery to zero per capita income growth with downside risks."

Mkhwebane’s battle with the president over his 2017 ANC campaign donations has been a flashpoint for the fightback campaign.

In July, Mkhwebane released a report finding that Ramaphosa had "deliberately misled" parliament when he responded to a question by saying that a R500,000 payment from Bosasa was paid to his son, Andile. This is despite the fact that Ramaphosa had, within days, corrected his statement to parliament, saying he belatedly realised the R500,000 had been donated to his CR17 ANC leadership campaign.

Then this month, bank statements leaked, almost certainly from Mkhwebane’s office, providing details of who had donated to his campaign.

In parliament last week, Ramaphosa said the leak of his CR17 funding information was part of a "sinister agenda ... to undermine the positive changes" since his election. "In its funding and its activities, there was no wrongdoing. Let me repeat, no wrongdoing, no criminality and no abuse of public funds or resources," he emphasised.

While opponents were quick to claim that individual donors, like Ramos, Hosken Consolidated Investments CEO Johnny Copelyn, and the Oppenheimer family were seeking to "capture" the president, Ramaphosa quickly scotched that too. Donors owed no-one an apology, said Ramaphosa.

EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu said it looked as if the white establishment "has rented a president", while DA leader Mmusi Maimane said it was proof that state capture "goes much deeper" than the Guptas.

On this aspect, Pityana said he had somewhat of a schizophrenic view. "I really believe, as a matter of principle, in transparent party political funding and I don’t like the fact that some of these people funded [Ramaphosa’s] campaign secretly. But they are [somewhat] heroes too, because can you imagine if they didn’t fund [him] — possibly we’d have a Zuma regime continuing in office," he said.

But while transparency was needed over donations, there’s no sense that Ramaphosa did anything wrong — though it has been painted as such, even by elements within his own party.

The problem, says Matshiqi, is that the negative elements in the ANC far outweigh all that is good. This creates a poor governance structure, even for the relatively new Ramaphosa administration.

"The state of the ANC is clearly having an impact on the state of the state," he says. "The malaise in the ANC is infecting the state. The question is, how did we get here? We got here because for too long, over the past 25 years, our political and electoral system has been uncompetitive, producing the single-party dominance of the ANC."

As a result, he says, what ails the ANC ends up infecting us all.

Matshiqi argues that due to the protracted nature of the ANC’s internal conflict, solving some of the problems may not be possible at all. "The effect of the internal battles in the ANC has led to a situation [where we can] safely say the party is still in intensive care. Some may even say it’s in the mortuary and one of the ‘powerful’ pastors is keeping the ANC alive," says Matshiqi.

This brings us to the Ace factor.

ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule is often portrayed as the face of a faction that has the power to neutralise or counter Ramaphosa. But is that true? The former Free State premier may be in a far more vulnerable political situation than the media suggests, according to a member of the ANC’s national executive committee, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The reality, he says, is that Magashule does not enjoy good relations with many of the ANC’s liaison officials at provincial level. And many grassroots structures were overtly hostile to him.

This created "no-go areas" for Magashule, who under normal circumstances would be seen as the ANC’s chief administrator and chief spokesperson.

But because of Magashule’s style of politics — less diplomacy and tact, more force — he can be easily outmanoeuvred when he ventures into the grassroots areas to trouble-shoot problems.

If anything, this has happened way too early in his first term as ANC secretary-general — perhaps due to the belief that he hasn’t reached out to the Ramaphosa camp after Nasrec.

Magashule’s situation is also entirely different from that of his predecessors, Gwede Mantashe and Kgalema Motlanthe, who enjoyed admiration and legitimacy in office.

Mantashe is now the mining minister in Ramaphosa’s cabinet. His first term as ANC secretary-general was rocky, as the ANC Youth League spearheaded a bid to remove him.

But his ability to do the political maths and cram the party’s rules and constitution into his head ensured his survival.

Mantashe knew how to exploit opponents’ weaknesses and pin them to the canvas at the first chance.

For example, by the time Mantashe was re-elected to a second term as secretary-general, Julius Malema had been expelled from the ANC and could only follow events on TV while licking his wounds at home — before the idea arose to form the EFF.

Malema told the FM in the past that it was Mantashe who drove a wedge between him and Zuma, leading to his expulsion.

Those in leadership positions cannot focus on the task at hand because they are fighting political battles and fighting for political survival

—  Aubrey Matshiqi

Magashule, by contrast, just doesn’t have that sort of political capital.

So how will the "war on Cyril" play out? In all likelihood, events will probably reach a climax at the ANC’s NGC.

The event, which will take place in the second half of next year, is the equivalent of a midterm conference. It will be attended by delegates of all branches, and probably about half the 4,000 or so representatives who typically go to national conferences will attend.

Though normally a boisterous affair, it is not an elective meeting.

Previous attempts to remove ANC presidents at such gatherings have failed.

Still, it is bound to be a difficult meeting for Ramaphosa, with his leadership of the party coming under intense scrutiny under the guise of a "policy review".

A number of hard economics-related issues are bound to be on the table. Unemployment (now 29%, or 38% if you count those who’ve stopped looking for work), economic growth of less than 1% and soaring public debt form a dangerous cocktail that could make his life difficult.

Hostile factions may criticise him for the slow pace of land redistribution — specifically, the implementation of a previous resolution to effect the expropriation of land without compensation.

At least Ramaphosa will be able to rely on the backing of a number of provinces, including Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape, Limpopo and almost half of KwaZulu-Natal, to form a solid defence bloc.

But even if Magashule isn’t as invincible as some suspect, he’ll still represent the face of opposition to Ramaphosa — as well as those who don’t seem to recognise the moral decay in the party, or the need to change that.

The lack of tangible economic reforms is blamed on a Zuma fightback, but it may simply be that the New Dawn is distracted

—  What it means

UJ’s Ndletyana sees Magashule as just one of many ANC leaders who can’t distinguish between right and wrong. "There is a substantial number of people who think immoral behaviour is nothing to be ashamed of," he says.

A lot of them can be found in the ANC’s benches in parliament — a clear risk for the Ramaphosa reforms.

These are also the people who, when it comes to a vote on the removal of Mkhwebane after a string of damning judgments against her, may opt not to eject her from the public protector chair.

"It is clear not everyone in the ANC is fully behind the New Dawn," says Ndletyana. "That is why I doubt that the ANC caucus would unanimously vote to remove Mkhwebane, should the matter go to a vote. As a result, Mkhwebane might just stay put."

And if the Ramaphosa-led ANC isn’t able to remove a reckless public protector who has been widely shamed in a series of damning court rulings, it’ll be a sign that the wet concrete in which the president’s legs have been wedged for months may have permanently set and immobilised him.

With additional reporting by Claudi Mailovich