NATASHA MARRIAN: Cyril Ramaphosa takes care to deliver on his promises

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s promise in his state of the nation address of a “new dawn” was a lofty one. Given the fractured leadership elected by the ANC at its 54th national conference at Nasrec in December, it was never going to be easy for Ramaphosa to pull together a party split down the middle.

Even though he was elected president, some of those in the top six who backed him did so to further their own ambitions: think deputy president David Mabuza. Despite the mild personality Ramaphosa projects, his ascent to the highest office has certainly shaken up the country’s politics in 2018. His swearing-in as president has had a fascinating effect on his opponents in the ANC, with desperation, chaos and fear becoming the norm. Former president Jacob Zuma ruled by fear, but the fear this time around is decidedly different: it is the fear of transparency, the fear of being held to account for the first time in a decade and, frankly, the fear of orange overalls. Opposition parties have battled to regroup after Zuma’s departure.

The official opposition, the DA, has suffered its first real split with the departure of former Cape Town mayor Patricia De Lille, who, ironically, took centre stage in the party after she was suspended on the eve of the ANC’s Nascrec conference. Now her fledgling party threatens the DA in its power base, the Western Cape. By-elections this week showed exactly how precarious the situation has become for the DA after it lost two wards in the Matzikama and Cederberg municipalities. The reason these losses are harrowing for the DA is that the ANC had, in effect, been obliterated in the Western Cape. The ANC’s current head of elections, Ebrahim Rasool, admitted in an interview with Business Day that the party is clawing its way back from an extremely low base in the province.

There are two more by-elections scheduled for early 2019, in Cape Town and Kimberley in the Northern Cape, which will provide a further indication of just how hard the DA will have to work to retain its base, let alone win another province.

The EFF has gone completely off the rails, quickly morphing from fighting corruption to defending it. This was after its top leaders were implicated in the VBS bank-heist saga. Its motivation for defending axed South African Revenue Service (Sars) boss Tom Moyane is also transparent given the proximity of its leaders to alleged tobacco smuggler Adriano Mazzotti. Evidence before the Sars commission showed how the illicit tobacco industry, benefiting the likes of Mazzotti, thrived under Moyane.

Inside the ANC, Zuma hardliners are backing the BLF under former EFF MP Andile Mngxitama, whose comments about killing white people have resulted in censure from the Electoral Commission of SA, with a request from Solidarity to bar the BLF from contesting the polls. It is astounding that Mngxitama’s vile, Gupta-sponsored politics of hatred holds any sway at all, but the Zuma-ites are desperate for a platform, and one that is paid for is easy to control.

Former SABC head Hlaudi Motsoeneng too launched a political party this week – the African Content Movement. Its only drawcard is its positioning on the ballot paper, a factor that is believed to have given the little-known AIC seats in councils in the local government election due to its proximity to the ANC on the ballot and the similarity of its initials.

It has long been difficult, if not impossible, to track the government’s progress against the policy outline handed down by the head of state during the opening of parliament. Zuma’s state of the nation addresses were mostly devoid of fact. In the end, the opening of parliament each year became little more than a spectacle. It became about a man instead of the progress and building of a nation. The blocking of cellphone signals in the National Assembly, riot police on the streets, the menace of the men in black and white suits ready to physically haul any parliamentarian out of the house at the slightest provocation — this is what characterised the final appearances of Zuma in parliament.

However, when Ramaphosa delivered his inaugural address in February as, in effect, an interim president, the mood was lighter. Shortly thereafter he got to work, and no doubt quickly realised that the quagmire in which his predecessor placed the nation was far more severe than he had anticipated. It was under Ramaphosa that the country entered a technical recession, unemployment continued to escalate, and years of neglect of governance came back to haunt what was now his administration.

Looking back, perhaps this was why Zuma —  as politically astute as he was — opted to have Kgalema Motlanthe as a stand-in president when he defeated former president Thabo Mbeki in Polokwane. Motlanthe’s brief stint allowed Zuma to make a clean break with the Mbeki administration and begin on his own terms. Mbeki’s term was far less ruinous than Zuma’s, which brought the economy to its knees and eroded institutions critical to the functioning of a constitutional democracy, such as the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and even parliament.

Despite these circumstances, much of what Ramaphosa promised in his February address has come to pass, albeit in the midst of noise, struggle and much frustration for ordinary citizens. He has held a jobs summit, his investment envoys continue to work on bringing in foreign investments, the NPA has a new head and Sars is well on its way to being turned around, with Moyane’s court loss opening the way for Ramaphosa to appoint a new commissioner.

There is much still to be done, but Ramaphosa is on a good wicket and if his first real term in office is anything like his first year as caretaker, he will indeed make good on his promise to the nation in his February address when he said: “Together, we are going to make history.”

• Marrian is political editor.