It’s been a rough year, but a turn to the positive is possible. Don’t raise your hopes too much, but two good things happened last week. We need to acknowledge them. First, President Cyril Ramaphosa opened the borders to international visitors. This is fantastic. It may be late, but it is still a positive. We need to revive this economy, and tourism is where we can restart easily and cheaply.
Second, Ace Magashule appeared in court on corruption charges. This is good. We need to see more high-profile politicians being arrested and appearing in court for corruption. We also need those who are guilty to go to jail. There is no better deterrent than people knowing that theft and greed don’t pay no matter how powerful you may be. This is not about Magashule. This is about SA.
Are these two events enough of a silver lining? No, but they are something positive in the promising but stalled life of the three-year-old Ramaphosa administration. Ramaphosa inherited a catastrophe created by Jacob Zuma and the ANC he held in his thrall for 10 years. The country’s healthy finances, built up assiduously by Thabo Mbeki and Trevor Manuel, had been frittered away. An embarrassment such as Des van Rooyen had been shown inside the National Treasury, a place whose toilets he would ordinarily not even be allowed to clean, while the likes of Bongani Bongo were ministers in a cabinet of fools and thieves.
In December 2017, SA was in a deep economic, political and financial crisis. It needed new, decisive, leadership to help it out of the slough of despond it was stuck in.
Enter Ramaphosa and his team. They promised something new and refreshing. They promised action. They asked us to come along with them. "Thuma Mina!" the president said, and many across the country offered their talents and time.
It’s easy to measure the progress of a crisis administration. Take the Obama administration of 2009. It is easy to tabulate its successes. President Barack Obama came in after the debilitating global financial crisis. Joblessness was high, people were desperate.
Over the next eight years you could see the unemployment numbers drop. The bankruptcies declined and new businesses came to life. By the end of his tenure in 2016, the US was on a winning streak. Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, inherited a pumping economy and rode it.
There is no better deterrent than people knowing that theft and greed don’t pay no matter how powerful you may be
It should therefore be easy to tabulate Ramaphosa’s progress. With three years under his belt, where has he succeeded and where has he failed? The coronavirus has made this exercise complicated, of course.
Ramaphosa’s biggest failure is the fact that the ANC remains as divided, as indecisive, as prone to policy disagreements, as it was under Zuma. In fact, the Zuma ANC was much better because at least one knew that it would act in a certain way — a corrupt way. The divided ANC under Ramaphosa means that policy is still haphazard and unimplementable.
This failure to unite the ANC and energise it into a tool for development lies at the root of the sluggish three years of Ramaphosa’s leadership of the party.
It is impossible for this tired, divided and corrupt animal to rouse itself and become a champion for the country. It is having an endless, useless, argument with itself at the expense of all of us.
That is why Magashule’s arrest and appearance in court matters for Ramaphosa. Magashule has been the main Ramaphosa antagonist in the party, leading a coterie of policy refuseniks who sow doubt about Ramaphosa at every turn. It’s not that they actually have serious thoughts on policy. Not at all. They just need something to dress up their corrupt ways.
With Magashule out of the way and weakened, Ramaphosa will hopefully have the space to implement a serious reform agenda.
He is not home free. It’s still a battle. Magashule will go out on a Zuma-style roadshow of victimhood. But space for Ramaphosa is opening up. He has swatted Zuma aside — remember how the former president’s fightback attempt was defeated at the party’s national executive committee meeting in September?
Now Magashule is on the ropes. The political space is opening up. Ramaphosa should use it.
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