Ramaphosa stays or go: No difference, really

It will make absolutely no difference whether Ramaphosa goes or stay on as President. The time of the “Ramaphosa miracle” has passed. His departure has already been accounted for by the financial markets.

Ramaphosa was an enormous disappointment. More than that, from my perspective, Ramaphosa was just a continuation of the Zuma racist regime that has crept into the country’s governing narrative since the ANC started losing more-and-more of its cloud of invisibility that surrounded it since the years of Nelson Mandela, and the moral authority he exercised during his release from prison. The resistance against state capture and corruption was interpreted as “White resistance”, and the so-called “redress” or transformation campaign was intensified.

In reality, the decline and collapse started during the Mbeki governance period, and not the Zuma one.

Over the period 1994 to 2024, the annual median economic growth rate was 2,6%. Over the period 1999 to 2008, when the Mbeki and Manual pair were effectively in control of the country’s finances, the median annual growth rate was 3,2%. Over the period 2009 to 2017, when Zuma was in control. It was 1,9% per annum, and during Ramaphosa’s governance term (2018 to 2024, it was 1,37%. Ramaphosa was the worst of them all.

Investment strives on sentiment, and the sentiment towards South Africa was perceptionally extremely positive during the period 1994 to 2004; until investors realized that the policy framework of the ANC is all but investors friendly.

During the period 1994 to 2024, the median annual unemployment rate was 22,94%; during the Mbeki years, 22,61%, during the Zuma years, 24,73%, and during the governance period of Ramaphosa, 30,66%.

Central government debt to GDP over the period 1994 to 2024 was an annual median of 43,8%; over the period 1994 to 2008, 37,6%; over the period 2009 to 2017, 40,36%, and over the period 2018 to 2024, it was 73,59%.

All key indicators worsened during Ramaphosa’s rule; and so did the racist rhetoric.

Ramaphosa was never really a businessperson, with a thorough understanding of free markets and good business practices. He became filthy rich post-1994, when the then super-rich White business class, eager to win the favor of the new rulers, and to keep their wealth (and the system generating it) in place, overload him with shares and riches; him, and a few others, like his brother=-in-law, Patrice Motsepe. There was never any serious building of a business or wealth, and gaining experience in the process. As an article in BusinessTech put it: “His primary source of wealth was the Shanduka Group, a pioneering black economic empowerment (BEE) company”. Ramaphosa did not created wealth, he gained it through black economic empowerment deals. Obviously for him redistribution of wealth from White to Black must have been seen as the way of making money and empower Black people.

Ramaphosa always, during his Presidency anyway, was in the habit of making almost extreme race-related declarations. For me, the one behaviour of Ramaphosa that exposed this tendency, was his utterances in 2000, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, when he did not hesitate to stick his nose in the affairs of another sovereign state; and that from a man that is always full of wisdom about the sovereignty of nations.

The truth is not Ramaphosa was not better than Zuma; just as the ANC is not better than uMkhonto weSizwe Party. The language spoken is propogandist utterances only, nothing more; they are cut from the same cloth. Ramaphosa believed in, and did his level best, within the few existing constraints, to marginalised White South Africans. It was under his rule that the draconic BBBEE codes and employment equity targets were adopted.

His rule was none less racially fundamentalist than that of Zuma.

Ramaphosa was part of a generation of ANC leaders that never learned any humidity, because they were never put in a position that necessitated it. South Africa formally transitioned from Apartheid in 1994, and but the gradual process of change started many years earlier. This generation of ANC leaders was always in a very strong power relationship; first with the leaders of the Apartheid system, and then, after 1994, with the South African population and the international community. The world told this generation that they cannot be wrong, and that everything they do that turned out wrong, was the result of an external intervention. They believed it, and acted accordingly. No accountability, enormous, self-enrichment through corrupt means, and through the manipulation of BBBEE laws, the destruction of institutions, and the collapse of all standards of excellence. And the shield against the implications, at all times? “We were the victims of Apartheid.”

Ramaphosa was a dismal failure as the ruler of this country. But he was not only one; in fact, he was only tin charge at a time when the implications of destructive policies started reaching its climax.

Zuma caused considerable damage through his state capture, his poor governance abilities and his extended network of mafia-type beneficiaries of corruption. However, these practices did not end with his rule – as is now confirmed by the Madlanga commission and the internal fights in the Police Service erupting in public. All of these events are symptoms of the greater evil, which is the so-called National Democratic Revolution. In reality, the ANC always, from the very start after gaining government power, set out to distribute to spoils to cadres, and create a system of population dependency. It is a criminal enterprise masquerading as a government.

It will make no difference if Ramaphosa should go now; he never was an asset to good governance and development. Ramaphosa was a loyal ANC cadre, nothing more, and nothing less. Like all ANC cadres, his real purpose was self-enrichment, for him, his friends and family. In this, he succeeded.

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