It is often said leaders are defined by their times, not by their dreams, ambition or intentions. As he approaches the midpoint of his five-year presidency and the end of his first term as party leader, the time might have arrived for President Cyril Ramaphosa to re-evaluate his agenda and focus on the one dictated to by his times rather than his 2017 campaign.
In 2016, David Cameron, then British prime minister, called a referendum for the British people to decide whether they wanted to remain inside the EU or leave. Unwisely, they voted to leave.
Cameron, who had advocated remaining in the EU, resigned and was replaced by Theresa May, who promised to deliver an orderly exit from the European common market. She failed, and fell on her sword.
Then came Boris Johnson, the scandal-prone, outgoing prime minister. After being elected, he delivered Brexit, and then things changed and swept him out of 10 Downing Street after he was forced to quit as Conservative party leader.
Having delivered Brexit — as the exit from the EU has become known — Johnson failed to deliver on the agenda defined by his times (namely honesty and clean governance). He was caught up in lies and sleaze.
In 1901, in the US, William McKinley was assassinated, thrusting his vice-president, Theodore Roosevelt, into the presidency. Within a short period, Roosevelt’s times delivered his agenda: coal miners went on a protracted strike.
As president, he had no legal instrument to intervene in the private dispute. As the strike continued month after month and people started dying, he followed his instincts: he ignored advice from his aides and cabinet and intervened, delivering the “Square Deal” for the coal workers.
In a definitive study of four American presidents, Leadership in Turbulent Times, presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin characterises Roosevelt’s president as one of crisis management.
Among the many differences between Johnson and Roosevelt’s leadership is that the latter rose to the occasion and dealt with the challenge of his time and, of course, took his job as president seriously.
In 2017, SA was in the throes of state capture, a form of corruption that sees state institutions being manipulated to serve the interests of a few non-state actors. Those times shaped Ramaphosa’s agenda: they required he should focus on stopping corruption and state capture.
As well as promising a “new dawn” — clean governance — for the country, he also pledged to clean up his party, the ANC, which had watched as corruption rose alongside poverty, unemployment and hunger, especially among black Africans, youths and women.
His campaign to clean his party has had mixed results: the biggest victory so far has been to force those implicated in criminal activities to step aside from their party roles (not government) and not contest party positions in terms of the latest iteration of the rules.
This weekend, the future of the step-aside rule will be determined when ANC branches meet to discuss and agree policies ahead of the national conference, where a new leadership will be elected in December. Obviously, at a personal level, he needs to decisively address the issue of the money that was stolen at his farm two years ago.
As president of the republic, Ramaphosa’s new dawn agenda was ambitious, promising a cure-all programme that would fix failing state-owned enterprises, professionalise the public service, appoint ethical and clean leaders, get the economy out of its low-growth mode to tackle poverty, inequality and unemployment, and agree a grand social compact as the basis for these solutions.
It would be churlish to say he has delivered nothing on his state agenda. Most of those fingered in wrongdoing are out of government; critical state institutions such as the SA Revenue Service and the National Prosecuting Authority are run by new leadership; the Zondo commission has completed its work with some decent recommendations; prosecutions of those found in the wrong are on the cards; after much delay, high-demand spectrum has been allocated; and much policy uncertainty of the previous administration has been addressed. And when the Covid-19 pandemic hit SA’s shores, it was initially well managed, even though the government’s response would later be marred by corruption and delays in procuring and rolling out vaccines.
However, times have changed, and Ramaphosa needs to urgently re-evaluate his priorities if he is to become the consequential president he can be. He is correct to have focused on the rolling power blackouts that have cast doubts on prospects of a speedy economic recovery and higher growth this year.
In the past few months, at least two things that require his urgent attention have emerged: the deterioration in the law and order situation; and the worst cost-of-living crisis in recent memory amid the return of the inflation monster and a hawkish stance taken by central banks to tame it.
These crises require a change of his posture: he needs to ditch business-as-usual and adopt a crisis management approach. These two crises require a concrete plan with short-, medium- and long-term interventions to address the economic crisis, not piecemeal solutions such as topping up social grants or fiddling with elements of the fuel price.
South Africans need assurance that he feels their pain and is doing something about it. These crises require focused leadership, and will define his presidency far more than a social compact could.
• Dludlu, a former Sowetan editor, is CEO of the Small Business Institute.
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