So, the year’s almost done. Not going to be hard to say goodbye. How does it get worse than no electricity; the national airline seeking rescue from its creditors; the government rooted to the spot, unable to make hard decisions; and the national administration of our cricket in a gooey mess days before the English arrive?
And yet, on Tuesday night, Eskom announced an unprecedented move to stage 6 load-shedding. The problem with stage 6 is that it’s that much harder to get back to merely stage 4, and extra pressure on a wobbly system makes a slide to stage 7 and 8 more likely than a recovery.
What we are witnessing is the collapse of a technology and the nationalist political hubris that sustains it. President Cyril Ramaphosa wrote in his weekly newsletter on Monday that he had recently visited Medupi and been surprised how big it all was. But what he cannot accept is that it does not, and may never, function properly. There is no fixing it. Or Kusile.
Had the government pressed ahead with more renewable energy we would not be facing darkness. Now it is too late and the president’s kitchen cabinet cannot help him. They have failed him and he has to account for stage 6 and then, almost inevitably, 8, alone. It is his fault.
Five months into 2020 you’ll be longing for 2019, I promise you. The heat is about to be turned up again and it’ll be the same story — the campaign to unsettle, or remove, Ramaphosa from office or at least ensure he doesn’t get a second term is on the move again. The signs are everywhere.
But not in the way you think. I still have DA MPs like Kevin Mileham tweeting gormlessly at me every time I am critical of Ramaphosa or the ANC. “You voted for Cyril and his New Dawn,” Mileham tweeted a few days ago after I’d said something unfawning about the government. “How’s that going, Peter?”
Actually, I’m still comfortable with supporting Ramaphosa in the election. It turns out neither Mileham nor his DA colleagues had much confidence in their own leader, Mmusi Maimane, when they were urging us all to vote for him. Whatever the state of our economy (and it’s really, really bad) and life in general in SA, the fact is we have a rational, reasonable and noncriminal human in charge of the government and wielding state power.
That he makes mistakes, or ignores the mistakes of others, or does appalling things like attend Robert Mugabe’s funeral and sings his praises, says farm murders aren’t real, pushes policies we can’t afford and threatens even more — that was always going to be the case. That’s his political life. He leads a party containing some of the most crooked and damaged people on earth. He has to say this stuff.
But he burrows quietly away, getting way too little credit for when something goes right, as former Finance Week editor and now Nedbank economist JP Landman reminded us in this piece nearly a month ago.
We have no choice but to go at Ramaphosa’s pace. It’s dictated entirely by politics and even if he knows the “unity” he chases in the ANC is a fiction, he drops the pretence at his peril. It is still the ANC high ground.
But, boy, the denizens of the underworld are out to get him. It’s not even about Jacob Zuma anymore, though Zuma would appreciate not having to stand trial for fraud he allegedly committed in the arms deal in the 1990s (he will). It is just to get law and order out of the way. This past weekend the Weekend Argus front page lead was about how “forces” were gathering against Ramaphosa, accusing him of getting ready to hand the state back over to white monopoly capital. Eskom would be privatised, the business rescue of SAA was a ruse to sell it off, and so on.
It’s all such rubbish it’s amazing that journalists still use their real names in their bylines. The Argus is “owned”, if that is the right word, by Iqbal Survé, whose continued influence over a spread of newspapers in the Independent group is directly threatened by Ramaphosa’s efforts to clean up the Public Investment Corp and to call in loans, like the R1bn-plus it lent Survé to buy Independent, made by delinquent PIC boards and leaders under Zuma.
The recent election of the ANC’s Geoff Makhubo as mayor of Johannesburg in the wake of the resignation of DA mayor Herman Mashaba as part of an internal DA struggle, is also being greeted by some as evidence of opposition to Ramaphosa gaining ground. It is assumed Makhubo is a crook because his company, Molelwane Consulting, took around R30m in fees off Regiments Capital for securing Regiments the management of the City of Johannesburg’s “sinking fund”, a pool of several billion rands, according to amaBhungane, put aside to meet the city’s future debt repayments. It is a dodgy deal by any measure. Regiments was up to its neck in state capture and became a tool of the Gupta family that controlled Zuma.
But a victory for the anti-Ramaphosa forces? We have yet to see.
What you have to understand is that this fightback story is in full swing again. But what I cannot tell you is whether it is an actual event or just a story. It was there before Ramaphosa was elected ANC leader in 2017. It came back after he deposed Zuma as head of state in February 2018 and is gathering strength again ahead of the ANC’s National Governing Council (NGC — a body that meets between elective conferences) in June next year. By then it will have reached fever pitch.
One of the most interesting avenues the story has taken in recent weeks first appeared in a story in Daily Maverick by Jan-Jan Joubert, a journalist for whom I have the utmost respect. It was published on Wednesday November 20, the day before an ANC parliamentary caucus meeting and openly warned of a rebellion against Ramaphosa.
“It is not currently clear whether the Ramaphosa faction or their critics enjoy majority support in the caucus,” wrote Joubert. “Lobbying is under way but there are worries in the Ramaphosa camp that efforts to ensure [Pravin] Gordhan’s Thursday caucus speech is a friendly, informative talk, supported and accepted by caucus, may fail and a caucus vote might be lost.”
This was before the final fall of SAA into business rescue and I have to say I was a little alarmed. The next day the caucus met but there was no report in Daily Maverick about what had transpired. Nor anywhere else for that matter. Eventually, a week later, Joubert followed himself up.
The story paints a picture of a gravely divided ANC caucus but, frustratingly, is unable to demonstrate the division because despite the wave of opposition to Ramaphosa, it seems, there was no vote. “In the end,” Joubert writes, “it was decided that caucus would not vote on the matters raised as a decision on such matters fell outside the mandate of caucus. The matter must be settled at the ANC NGC in 2020, the caucus agreed.”
Nonetheless, backing his initial thesis, he reported that “Sources say core Ramaphosa supporters were in fact so concerned about the situation that mineral resources & energy minister and ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe, surely the most popular member of the ANC top six leadership among rank and file party members, was sent in to bat for Gordhan by co-answering caucus questions from MPs with Gordhan. Mantashe is a strong and reliable Ramaphosa ally.”
And this is surely key. The fact that a rebellious caucus somehow sensibly decided not to take a vote on a range of hot and divisive issues speaks, to me, of Ramaphosa being in control and not losing control. The fact that there was no vote is typical of Ramaphosa and the “unity” play. A vote would be irreversible. If he lost it, it would make life difficult for him. If he won it, it would make life difficult for him. Why risk it? Ramaphosa survives by not being there when you shoot at him.
I don’t mean to criticise Joubert. He is a wonderful journalist. But if you’re looking for stories with tension and threat in them then the ANC at any level is an easy place to start. But it is equally easy to ignore the fact that despite the same threats being raised by the same people all the time Ramaphosa’s position and his ability to make things happen may actually be strengthening (see Landman earlier), not weakening.
Something to really worry about, and here I’m sure Joubert is spot on, is the central role Mantashe plays in Ramaphosa’s survival.
Mantashe is the ultimate political animal. I have more than once used in describing him the insult delivered to Lord Mountbatten, viceroy of India, by one of his generals. “Dickie,” said the general, “you’re so crooked that if you swallowed a nail you’d shit a corkscrew!”
What often comes out of Mantashe’s mouth are corkscrews. He makes no sense and, in a macabre way, total sense. He is the ANC incarnate. At the moment, as Eskom’s technical and financial position becomes ever more dire, only he, as energy minister, can sign the paperwork to allow companies, like Sasol, Mondi and Sappi, with installed generating capacity to sell it into Eskom’s starved grid. Yet he signs nothing.
Only he, as energy minister, can authorise new auctions for renewable energy. Yet he does nothing.
Mantashe says he won’t be rushed and there is not much that Ramaphosa can do to move him if he resists. He is too dependent on him in the party. For the moment it is Mantashe’s refusal to take the action he can, to relieve our energy crisis, that is the great mystery of the closing of the year. Some say it is because of an old devotion to coal. Or even that he is personally invested in coal. Either way, why threaten coal?
Somewhere, somehow, money and politics are staying Mantashe’s hand. Unless he moves, Mantashe will threaten Ramaphosa far more directly in the end than any of his more swivel-eyed frothing opponents.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.