EDITORIAL: What is at stake for Cyril Ramaphosa as SA prepares to vote

The ANC is again using its president’s visage on posters ahead of a local government election, and its campaign is gaining momentum. 

Having President Cyril Ramaphosa’s flawed and scandal-hit predecessor, Jacob Zuma, as the face of the party’s campaign in 2016 backfired spectacularly, with the ruling party dropping 10 percentage points in various municipalities around SA. It lost control of the Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela metros — previous strongholds.

The good news for Ramaphosa is that his personal standing will most likely not be the thing that turns voters off. ANC insiders believe he single-handedly delivered the ANC’s victory in the 2019 national and provincial election, and he has consistently polled above the party, meaning his brand is stronger than that of the party, which is into its 110th year of existence. 

Anyone analysing his performance since rising to high office in February 2018 will be disappointed that he has not taken advantage of his personal popularity and made the tough decisions needed to get the economy on track. Instead, he put party before the country and allowed himself to be distracted by populist policies such as the long-standing push to change the constitution to facilitate the expropriation of land without compensation.

Also, too much time was spent on peripheral issues such as the debate on whether to nationalise the Reserve Bank, or even form a new state-owned lender. Key decisions on structural reforms were delayed, and cabinet appointments were also done with an eye on party unity rather than delivery.

He appointed the opponent he narrowly beat to the ANC leadership in December 2017, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to the co-operative governance portfolio tasked with overseeing local government. Under her watch, municipalities have stagnated even further, culminating in the ANC limping into the November 1 election. It was a political decision he may come to regret, since the ANC’s electoral performance in this election will have a direct effect on his bid for a second term, even as his approach is not anywhere near as toxic as his predecessor’s.

If the ANC fares badly in the 2021 local government elections, a campaign against Ramaphosa within the ANC will most definitely start. It was the beginning of the end for Zuma back in 2016 when the ANC’s electoral support declined sharply. First ANC ally Cosatu pulled away and took a formal decision to ask Zuma to step aside — ANC structures followed. But the move that secured Ramaphosa’s presidency — former Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza throwing his support behind him — was a direct result of the ANC’s poor electoral performance under Zuma.

However if the ANC does well, with Ramaphosa as the face of its campaign, then that would again be a vote of confidence in his reform agenda. It would be a mandate for Ramaphosa to put SA first and show more decisive leadership. That would be the easiest way for him to secure a second term and to help the ANC reverse its electoral decline.

During a press conference last week, Ramaphosa expressed regret that building a capable state was not top of the administration’s agenda from day one. Now his administration is reaping the whirlwind of its failure to immediately begin to set right the shambolic state of the government bureaucracy he found in place when he took over from Zuma in 2018. 

There is much at stake in the upcoming election for the consensus-seeking, diplomatic, process-driven Ramaphosa. Sure, he has steered the nation through an unprecedented time on the back of the Zuma-created crisis, and was also thrown off course by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The electorate will decide whether his mild-mannered approach to governance was what SA needed at a time of deepening economic and social crisis. If the electorate does give him the benefit of the doubt, he will need to show a more decisive side, or the ANC, and his leadership, will be in real trouble come the 2024 national elections.