The rand best tells the story of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s six years in office.
On February 19 2018, three days after his triumphant first state of the nation (Sona) speech, the rand strengthened to R11.54 to the dollar. This week, as he delivers his Sona, it hovers around a miserable R18.90. February has consistently been a terrible month for the rand since 2019 and it already breached R19 last month.
This is the last Sona of a president and government that came to office with the country fully and enthusiastically behind them. It is hard to find a serious South African who did not want to see the back of the “nine wasted years” of Jacob Zuma and his kleptocratic retinue. State-owned entities were on their knees. The government was being run from the Guptas’ Saxonwold compound. Business and consumer confidence was destroyed.
This nation desperately wanted Ramaphosa and his team to succeed. It wanted to put the years of shame of the Zuma era behind it. I laugh when I hear someone like minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni claim that the private sector has no interest in the development of the country and was “engineering the collapse” of Ramaphosa’s government. Anyone with a half-decent memory will remember how the private sector rushed to offer its resources and expertise to help it rebuild a country devastated by Zuma’s venality. Ordinary South Africans pledged their time and resources to help return the country to winning ways.
Instead of bringing Zuma’s house down, Ramaphosa chose to live in it
Goodwill towards Ramaphosa has more than overflowed from corporates and citizens. An Ipsos poll conducted in September 2018 found he was by far the most popular political leader in South Africa. Even today, businesspeople continue to line up outside Ramaphosa’s door to help him fix Transnet, Eskom and the many other entities and sectors his government has failed to resurrect.
Ramaphosa has trampled on that goodwill because he chose to appease everyone — most importantly, the man responsible for the destruction (Zuma) and the many nefarious elements within the ANC. He has done little or nothing to implement the many reforms he said he would spearhead. He has dragged his feet on key appointments and policy changes. Instead of bringing Zuma’s house down, Ramaphosa chose to live in it.
The rand/dollar chart from 2018 to 2024 tells the story of what has come with this terrible choice.
The poster child of the failure of the Ramaphosa administration is the mineral resources & energy ministry led by ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe. Mantashe is a former secretary-general of the National Union of Mineworkers, an outfit founded by Ramaphosa in the 1980s. These two men know the mining industry intimately; you would expect them to not have too much trouble interacting with stakeholders and resolving issues there swiftly and efficiently.
Under the previous mining minister, Mosebenzi Zwane, the department was a disaster. Thousands of mining licence applications went untouched and unprocessed for years. The corrupt, notorious forced sale of a Glencore asset to the Gupta family was made — publicly — with the minister travelling to Switzerland to strong-arm mining executives. The industry was a dystopian mess.
Well, Mantashe hasn’t fixed it. In January Daily Maverick reported that of the more than 2,500 mining applications received in the 2023/2024 financial year, not one has been finalised. Zero. Zilch. Not a single one.
Last week Mantashe — six years after being appointed minerals minister — announced the preferred supplier to design and manage a new mining cadastre. It’s an online database and licence system for applications and permit holders that would have resolved the administrative mess in the department years ago. The announcement was made just a week before global mining bosses, ministers, investors and analysts arrived in Cape Town for the annual Mining Indaba.
The mining cadastre business and the amateurish tender announcement — only now, amid the scandal of the applications backlog — tells you just what kind of leader has been in charge these past six years. What has this government been waiting for? Why should anyone believe that the promises of this month’s many speeches will mean anything at all?
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