In just more than two weeks President Cyril Ramaphosa will celebrate the fourth anniversary of his ascendance to the top job in the governing ANC. This came after a bruising campaign that pitted him against Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma — or rather, the factions aligned with them took each other on.
The promise of reform underpinning the Ramaphosa ticket, labelled the New Dawn, was touted as a statement of intent signalling how he planned to lead the party, and ultimately SA. At its core, the message seemed important. The ANC had descended into a motley crew of factions and hangers-on united less by ideological patterns than patronage persuasions. Its descent into chaos had inevitably filtered through to the state at large, where many of the variables necessary for a functional state had been gradually undermined.
In his inaugural address as SA president Ramaphosa amplified the New Dawn message by issuing a call to arms for citizens to step up and participate in reforming the state by firstly enunciating Thuma Mina! and then, presumably, taking on critical jobs aimed at fixing the country. But beneath the veneer of hysteria and hyperbole lay the longstanding question of whether the party he led would buy into his agenda in a manner that would actually translate to tangible outcomes.
As it turned out, the answer was no, and in a spirited attempt at repairing the cracks in the party from within, Ramaphosa spent much time seeking to placate party factions rather than leading the country. The inevitable result of this was paralysis, a dearth of decisive governance that left many of his backers dismayed at just how slow everything has been.
The pitiful condition of state enterprises and the economy at large was expected to be an area he would focus on sorting out by applying his own experience in business and the labour movement, and by appointing foot soldiers who had the capacity to turn around important portfolios. Regrettably, due to political horse-trading the portfolios ended up being allocated to ministers who, best intentions and political clout notwithstanding, have turned out to be less than effective.
The labour force statistics released earlier in the week indicated that the unemployment crisis keeps escalating and little in the way of decisive reform has been put in its place to arrest this runaway problem. Ramaphosa’s employment & labour minister, Thulas Nxesi, seems to regard his posting as a labour of pain where the remedy is patience rather that action.
One must feel for him though. The ANC’s fixation with placating its internal allies and enemies means even the best laid plans are stillborn as soon as the question of implementation is put on the table. All of this would lead many a president to revisit the question of what exactly his legacy is supposed to be.
The problem that looms large now is that the countdown to the next ANC elective conference is well under way. At the heart of the deliberation will be the simple question of whether the incumbent president is fit for purpose. The problem with that question is that being fit to lead the ANC and being fit to lead the country may turn out to require rather divergent skills. One seems to be a question of placating and refusing to alienate divergent forces in between conferences — and even between national executive committee meetings. The other requires decisive and often unpopular decision-making whose effects ought to transcend the presidential term and build a national road map.
The evidence of the past four years is that while Ramaphosa may possess some of these skills, deploying them effectively across his twin portfolios has thus far been an exhibition of political paralysis.
• Sithole (@coruscakhaya) is an accountant, academic and activist.
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