Investors should temper their expectations of what economic reforms President Cyril Ramaphosa and the new ANC leadership will implement in 2023.
Ramaphosa has more leverage in the party. He won the party presidency decisively in December. The series of victories against opponents trying to unseat him using the Phala Phala saga has added to his standing in the party.
My calculation is that at the very least 66% of the new national executive committee (NEC) broadly supports him and his reform agenda. This is a far cry from December 2017, when he emerged from the party conference with a 51% win over Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma and a fragile 53% hold over the NEC. Now, he can largely do whatever he likes as quickly as he likes.
Such power has led many observers to express the hope that Ramaphosa will accelerate his reforms. I urge caution. Ramaphosa has not changed. He still puts the party above the country. He wants to keep the ANC united. He also still believes in small, guaranteed victories rather than bold moves. This does not augur well for swift, decisive action to resolve South Africa’s many pressing problems.
As you read this, it will have been just over 22 days since Ramaphosa won a second term. His new secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, has been saying Ramaphosa should fire the deadwood in his cabinet and appoint a new, effective executive. Ramaphosa has sat on his hands.
Last week, a journalist asked him when he would announce a cabinet reshuffle. He chuckled and said the journalist should “wait for the moment when the president will have applied his mind and stop asking when that is going to happen”.
Amazing. The president has not applied his mind to this even though Dlamini Zuma, Phumulo Masualle and Lindiwe Sisulu have all declared publicly and noisily that they have no confidence in him as a leader. Of course, if any of them had any integrity they would resign rather than serve in a cabinet led by a man they call a deadbeat and a liar to his face. But integrity and this lot are not compatible, so there they sit without any shame whatsoever.
Their belief is: fix the ANC, ensure that it remains a united force, then you will have a chance of fixing South Africa
Ramaphosa’s answer tells us that this is not a man in a hurry to solve the country’s numerous problems. We have unprecedented unemployment, poverty, homelessness and inequality. We have crime, xenophobia and violence roiling our communities. We have a civil service that is riven with corruption. We have investors wondering if we are serious about cutting red tape and ensuring policy uncertainty.
Ramaphosa and his team are not in a rush to deal with these pressing issues. Understand me: I am not saying Ramaphosa does not care about them. I am saying he is not focused on them as obsessively as many of us would like him to be. He is, instead, focused on the travails of his own party and its insider politics.
Even after the past five years, when the ANC has held back his administration with its internal squabbles, Ramaphosa and those around him see the ANC as the only route to resolving the country’s problems. Their belief is: fix the ANC, ensure that it remains a united force, then you will have a chance of fixing South Africa.
In their view, the ANC is the only vehicle capable of bringing positive change. This is Ramaphosa and the ANC’s blind spot and Achilles heel. The truth is, 29 years after the democratic breakthrough, a large chunk of the ANC is inimical to a prosperous South Africa. Many in the ANC are thieves, vultures who feed on the poor. Ramaphosa and the few good people around him are trying to unite with thieves.
There will be a cabinet reshuffle. Don’t expect fireworks — it will be calibrated to keep some thieves in the tent. There will be economic reforms, too, but they will be designed to keep the radical economic transformation crowd on side too.
Slow, deliberate and accommodationist all the way. That has been the Ramaphosa way and thus will it be again this year. I would be very happy to be shown this article in December and told I was wrong.
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