If Ramaphosa leaves, there’s no obvious ANC contender to take his place. (123RF)
There is no obvious successor if Ramaphosa goes. Where are the young leaders? Is South Africa a cult?
You see the problem, don’t you? The problem is not that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s position is so precarious that every hit he takes makes the collective hearts of business leaders — and South Africans who care — jump into their mouths.
It is that the source of South Africa’s rising confidence over the past six months has been built not around a core set of leaders, not around an organisation, but around one man.
Look around Ramaphosa and it’s very depressing. When Ramaphosa leaves, who does business work with and who do the parties to the GNU collaborate with? Where are the ambitious rising stars who can take over from him and inspire confidence?
The crisis triggered by last week’s Constitutional Court ruling that impeachment proceedings be launched following Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala scandal illustrates how poor the ANC and South Africa have been at succession planning.
The court ruling presents a conundrum for the DA and others in the GNU: can they work with Paul Mashatile, Ramaphosa’s controversial deputy? Are the DA, the IFP, Rise Mzansi and the other parties in the GNU prepared to be led by such a man? If not him, then who?
It is worth saying upfront that at a policy level, I have never known Mashatile to spout populist sentiments. On almost every key issue — except the NHI, on which ANC leaders toe the party line — he has consistently stood by market-friendly and very sober positions.
But the man has attracted controversy.
His history as an MEC and premier in Gauteng is littered with stories of how “the Alex mafia” was built around him, and how it divvied up government contracts for cronies and frontmen. He has denied wrongdoing, but the whispers persist due to frequent flashes of his unexplained wealth.
Most concerning is Mashatile’s closeness to Jacob Zuma in the period between 2007 and 2017. He was front and centre in the “premier league” — the faction of four premiers of Gauteng, North West, Mpumalanga and Free State — who schemed with Cosatu and the SACP to sack Thabo Mbeki and bring Zuma to power. If, for the sake of power, Mashatile was prepared to look aside as Zuma and his cronies captured the state, what is he prepared to do now to be in power?
This is all to say the Ramaphosa crisis shows just how bare the ANC and South Africa’s leadership cupboard is.
One of the most shocking revelations of the past week came when DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis told journalist Clement Manyathela that members of the business community and the ANC had called him throughout last weekend, asking that the DA vote not to impeach the president, even if the impeachment committee finds against Ramaphosa. To his credit, Hill-Lewis disagreed with them. Are we so desperate that we are prepared to trample on our constitution to protect a leader we happen to admire in many respects?
We are here now because the conduct of ANC politicians since the mid-2000s has made politics the arena of the corrupt and the disreputable. The best of our young people are not in the ANC Youth League, they are working hard at an accounting firm or trying to start a business in the townships. Enter politics? They will laugh you out of court if you make such a suggestion. Politics is where you go if you have an appetite for bribery and other types of corruption. Politics is where you go if you have no ethical or moral compass.
This is particularly painful given the selflessness of those who came before the current lot of sorry excuses we have for leaders.
Walter Sisulu, the longtime secretary-general of the ANC who recruited Nelson Mandela and propelled him into leadership, was a property investor. He gave it up to fight for a democratic South Africa. Mandela and Oliver Tambo were successful lawyers.
Now we are led by people who own multimillion-rand houses whose origins they cannot explain.
Whatever the next step may be for Ramaphosa and for South Africa, we need to have a conversation about the next layer of our leadership. We can’t have this intolerable situation where everything hangs on the fate of one man. That makes South Africa a cult. We need proper alternatives.