GARETH VAN ONSELEN: The great 60% Ramaphosa myth

A myth is doing the rounds, particularly in the financial sector. It goes like this: if the ANC is able to secure 60% in the 2019 national and provincial elections, President Cyril Ramaphosa will have the mandate he needs to implement meaningful reform and all will be good with the world.

The argument is that, as things stand, Ramaphosa has inherited a poisoned chalice. He has a fragile internal majority and, thus, is more or less bound to pre-existing ANC policy, of which the confusing mess that is the ANC’s current position on land reform constitutes the preeminent threat to economic confidence and certainty.

It is a myth because it appears to be built entirely on a foundation of blind faith, misplaced hope and an ahistorical analysis that ignores both evidence and precedent. Look at Ramaphosa’s actual record, inside and outside the ANC, and it is quite clear he is a follower, not a leader.

Ramaphosa has fashioned his approach to power around compromise and majoritarianism, not vision and purpose. And he takes his cue from the ANC, not from what is right and good. It has always been so. 

The 60% myth works like a sliding scale of sorts: the closer the ANC gets to 60%, the stronger Ramaphosa’s mandate, the more reforms he will be able to enact. The further away the ANC moves from 60% and the closer towards 50% it gets, the weaker Ramaphosa becomes. In a worst-case scenario, on the back of a dire election result, he is usurped by a representative of the forces for radical economic transformation, a euphemism for the destructive patronage politics of the Jacob Zuma era.

Quite why 60% has become the litmus test number is difficult to say. Myths are always part magic and that number clearly signifies something to the market forces.

There is a second, more meaningful myth often in accompaniment: that if the ANC and the EFF get 66% together, that signals real trouble. For then the constitution would be on the table and expropriation without compensation the likely first experiment.

How these two ideas co-exist is anyone’s guess. On the one hand: 60% for the ANC would seem to suggest the dawn of some benevolent age of economic sense and centrist thinking. On the other hand, 66% for the ANC and EFF combined (of which the ANC would have to get at the very least 60%) signifies the potential for an age of constitutional hostility and economic populism. So really, 60% for the ANC means whatever you want it to mean. That’s magic for you.

‘Big man’ politics

It is worth, then, looking at Ramaphosa himself. “Big man” politics defines so much political analysis in SA, whatever the actual evidence to the contrary, so let us indulge that worldview and see how his record in power holds up.

First and foremost, it is necessary to understand that Ramaphosa was fundamentally complicit in helping orchestrate the crisis we face today. The natural instinct here is to turn to his role as deputy president under Jacob Zuma, and we will look at that, but one needs to go back further still, to really appreciate the role he has played.

Here is an excerpt from a Sunday Times story on September 21 2008: “Arts and culture minister Pallo Jordan warned of the consequences for the ANC and the country, but others, like Tokyo Sexwale, Cyril Ramaphosa and [Blade] Nzimande, were adamant that Mbeki should go. Sexwale and Ramaphosa argued that Mbeki had hurt them and had abused state power to push them out of politics.” 

That was from an account of what happened at the ANC national executive committee (NEC) meeting to discuss former President Thabo Mbeki’s fate, after judge Chris Nicholson had ruled that he had overseen meddling in the National Prosecuting Authority's (NPA’s) case against Jacob Zuma. As a result of  that judgment and meeting, Mbeki was recalled.

Nicholson’s judgment was later overturned by the Supreme Court of Appeal, which was scathing in its assessment of what Nicholson had to say. But it mattered not. The political battle was long since over. Mbeki was vanquished, and Ramaphosa had played his part in helping to banish him, as he willingly rode the wave of populism that swept through the ANC.

As ANC deputy president, Ramaphosa oversaw the ANC’s cadre deployment committee — the very mechanism through which Zuma decimated the state’s ability to deliver, and destroyed any residual appreciation for merit or independence. 

He has never accounted for, nor explained, his failure that day. And it was a profound one. Pallo Jordan seemed to boast more backbone than Ramaphosa when it mattered. But it was typical of the majoritarian streak that so defines Ramaphosa: he goes with the flow, he does not aim to change the course of the river.

Having helped sow the seeds of destruction, Ramaphosa waited until 2012 to return to public life, as ANC deputy president. By that time Zuma had already done enough damage to require a decade to undo. Those other ANC loyalists of the Mbeki school, such as Trevor Manuel, were already doing the maths. By 2014, when Ramaphosa formally joined the Good Ship Destruction, as SA’s deputy president, Manuel had set his own life boat out to sea. 

Ramaphosa stepped into the breach, and where Zuma’s public credibility was collapsing, he happily provided his own stature in support, legitimating a man with an insatiable appetite for chaos and incompetence.

“I don’t see President Zuma as being beleaguered,” Ramaphosa said in an interview shortly after his election. “I see him as a very strong president; a president who has led from the front. What he has done that is most outstanding and prominent in my mind is delivering to the nation the National Development Plan (NDP).” More about that later.

And he helped out where he could, on that front. When Zuma was under siege, his self-indulgent monstrosity in Nkandla having been found to be a reckless and illegal monument to an ego immune to criticism, it was Ramaphosa, among many party faithful, who lent his name to defending Zuma, undermining the veracity of the public protector’s report and calling a spade a juice blender.

“There was no corruption, nothing to do with Nkandla was unlawful. The ‘fire pool’ is not even as big as an Olympic swimming pool,” Ramaphosa declared on the election road, in March 2014.

Later that month, he argued, again in the face of the public protector’s report, “We are saying that the integrity of the president remains intact and that this president has the ability and know-how to lead our government and SA going forward.”

Zuma was later forced to apologise to the nation, after no less than the Constitutional Court found that he had indeed violated his oath of office. Many inside and outside the ANC began to find their voices. Kgalema Motlanthe for one. They demonstrated some semblance of leadership. But not Ramaphosa. He not only denied any wrongdoing, but actually defended Zuma’s integrity, and in so doing sacrificed his own.

As ANC deputy president, Ramaphosa oversaw the ANC’s cadre deployment committee — the very mechanism through which Zuma decimated the state’s ability to deliver, and destroyed any residual appreciation for merit or independence. 

He said of his job that he was always guided by the question: “Have we got the best man, best woman, for the job?” Some of the high-profile individuals appointed to powerful national positions during his tenure include Brian Molefe, Matshela Koko, Mxolisi Nxasana, Shaun Abrahams, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, Ben Ngubane, Zethembe Khoza, Collins Letsoalo, Pat Mokushane and Berning Ntlemeza.

In this way, Ramaphosa helped deliver Jacob Zuma’s failed state. He put up no fight. He accepted no responsibility. But later he used his own dire record to justify the necessity of his election as president. We needed to clean up the mess, he said, like a toddler bemoaning the state of his own room as unacceptable, just after he has trashed it.

Perfecting lying politely

In parliament, Ramaphosa happily gave the veneer of credibility to obfuscation, misdirection and evasion. Zuma could never publicly get away with that. His words during question time were clumsy and blunt. He could not hide his contempt. But Ramaphosa would oil his language with the grease of rhetorical sophistry. He would lie, just like Zuma, only much more politely.

Read this account of one such question session:

or this one:

He assured the public that he was always working to ensure things worked better. But behind the scenes, he would always go along to get along.

When Ramaphosa was elected ANC deputy president, he waxed lyrical about the NDP. “I am also going to play a key role in helping that plan to be implemented,” Ramaphosa boasted. 

“I don’t think it is too ambitious. It is doable because it has the levers that we can put our hands on and make sure that it is implemented and what that plan will spawn is economic growth, job creation, and it will also help in so far as economic empowerment is concerned.”

He played no such role. The NDP was slowly and steadily eradicated from the public mind during his time, soon to be replaced by radical economic transformation, whatever that is, a nebulous idea Ramaphosa has also been willing publicly to endorse. There was no economic growth, just economic decline, as Ramaphosa watched on silently.

“This is a fairly modest target, and it's reasonable — taking into account where the global economic situation is and how it impacts on us as SA — and it is going to be a gradual accession to that 5%. We have got a few years in between, but we do want, that by 2019 we should hit the target of 5% and possibly even exceed it.”

That was Ramaphosa in June 2014, defending the 5% economic growth target Zuma set in his state of the nation address. Notice how Ramaphosa doesn’t just defend it but suggests too that it can be exceeded. For those of the Ramaphosa-was-always-just-biding-his-time school of thought, this is worth considering. To hedge your bets is one thing; to up the ante is quite another.

Optimism is a powerful placebo in the face of despair. Hope is just a belief, really, but do not doubt the way in which it can play with the brain. It can reduce hard evidence not just to irrelevance but change its nature, so that it appears to be the very opposite of what it actually is. 

A great many people have been stuffing their mouths full of these illusionary pills. They look on at Ramaphosa and see only what they want to see: a saviour, a brave man fighting a daunting battle against dark forces, a beacon of promise and hope.

And so Cyril Ramaphosa can stand up and say there will be expropriation without compensation. What is heard is: there is no fundamental threat to property rights.

Everything else is wished away. The vote for Mbeki, the defence of Nkandla, the role in cadre deployment, the abandonment of the NPD, the fronting for failed policies, the endorsements of Jacob Zuma as a president with “integrity”, “know how”, who was “strong” and who had “led from the front”, the failure to deliver his own promises — all of these never happened. Because that wasn’t the real Cyril Ramaphosa — he has yet to reveal himself.

But give the man 60% and he will emerge from the shadows. The real Cyril Ramaphosa, defined by all this fantastical myth-making, will appear.

Only, he will not.

The ultimate party man

The truth is that Ramaphosa is, and always has been, a party man — in many respects, the perfect party man, totally pliant before the will of the machine. But that cannot be accepted as true. Because, to accept that would mean one has look at the ANC not the leader, in determining the nature of the administration to come. Do that, and no placebo is going to help brighten the view. It is dark and desperate indeed.

In turn, any “reforms” are revealed for what they really are: the polishing and refining of the machine, so that it can better deliver on its failure to deliver. And of all those failures, a collapsed economy constitutes the final and most devastating outcome.

Sixty percent for the ANC will ensure one thing and one thing only: the ANC’s control will be stronger than ever before. And the lesson we will have taught Ramaphosa could not be more destructive: nothing you say is ever what it appears, you are never responsible for your actions, thus you can never fail.

And yet failure is all we experience.

SA is now a mediocrity. The exemplar for it is Cyril Ramaphosa. He represents the triumph of low expectations. The greatest threat to SA’s future now is that he meets the miserable standard we have set.

• Van Onselen is the head of politics and government at the South African Institute of Race Relations.