You can’t blame the nation for not being particularly excited before Cyril Ramaphosa’s television address on Sunday night: these days his broadcasts are as compelling as a dead-eyed intern in the office of a small supermarket slumping over the microphone and muttering “Hennie, cleanup on aisle 3, Hennie, there’s a broken egg there by the garlic polony...”
However, this one managed to cause some outrage, and not only because the president kept us waiting for the compulsory half-hour built into these things to remind us that he’s important and we’re not.
As Ramaphosa announced that he would be responding to allegations of political interference in criminal investigations made by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi by launching a commission of inquiry, many South Africans took to social media to denounce Ramaphosa as the most indecisive president we’ve ever had.
I understand the frustration, of course, but I would also humbly suggest that these loud and angry calls for immediate action — rule by decree, even — reveal that South Africans still haven’t understood two fairly important things.
The first is that Ramaphosa can’t sack people without evidence of wrongdoing. On the contrary, there is a very clear protocol in place that he must follow: police minister Senzo Mchunu must be suspended on full pay, and if wickedness is discovered, he must immediately be charged, then have tea and cookies with the ANC’s integrity committee, then be redeployed into a senior position in the party until we’ve all got a bit foggy on the details, and only then return to high office.
The second is that Ramaphosa is a president without a constituency who delivered the ANC’s worst election result in its history. Those who demand action seem to have convinced themselves that he has emperor-like powers, but all Ramaphosa really has is some tenuous agreements with some highly pragmatic hustlers, written in fading ink on crumbling napkins from clubs that have gone out of business since Nasrec.
Even if the law allowed Ramaphosa to start summarily firing people, doing so would broadcast the message to those hustlers that honesty has become more powerful than loyalty, at which point all of them would start sending their CVs to stronger godfathers and Ramaphosa would run out of friends faster than a tenderpreneur who’s just had his Maybach repossessed by the SA Revenue Service.
He would be recalled in 2027, and those who want decisive presidential action would finally get to see it. Granted, they’d see it through the rear windows of their cars as they queued to leave the country at Beitbridge, but still.
Finally though, perhaps the best argument for a commission of inquiry is that it buys everyone time, whether to shred documents or, if they’re lawyers, to scour the Zondo state capture report for all those beautiful precedents where people with apparently inarguable links to corruption get to be rehired as senior party officials.
Likewise, Ramaphosa will know that six months is a very long time in politics. Just this week Donald Trump, apparently disoriented by an Epstein list that, according to him, was created by Barack Obama but also doesn’t exist, seems to have forgotten telling Joe Biden that arming Ukraine would drag the US into World War 3 and has decided to arm Ukraine.
In six months, Ramaphosa might be saying, we could be watching the third week of the Great Oligarch War of 2025, as Russia and the US fire strippers, tanning beds and lip fillers at each other and nobody can remember anything about that Mchunu bloke…
No, Ramaphosa knows he has only two choices: go by the book, or go.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.