Since the election of Cyril Ramaphosa as president there has been a strange mixture of euphoria and dread among South Africans. The euphoria is linked to an enduring sense of relief that a competent leader is finally governing the country again, and the dread to suspicion that the endearing “Oom Cyril” is in fact a staunch ANC commie, bent on stripping citizens of their property rights.
Understandably, the rhetoric of expropriation without compensation is most frightening to propertied South Africans and for activists at the Institute of Race Relations and AfriForum. As Frans Cronjé rightly states, such radical redistribution will be disastrous for the economy. But what analysts seem to neglect about Ramaphosa’s leadership is his inheritance of such populist ideas from the then cornered Zuma & Co, whose remnants still hold significant power within the ANC.
Ramaphosa could not abandon what was fashionable thinking among the radical-economic transformation gang of the ANC (and EFF). He had to be careful or his fragile hold on power would be compromised.
His strategy has consequently been to pretend to go ahead with expropriation while trying to numb its radical tones and shoddily envisioned policies over time.
By going ahead with spectacles such as the public hearings on amending the constitution, Ramaphosa undertook a politics of pretence to trick his enemies. Like an unstoppable and dangerous viral wave hitting a population, he had to ride along with the ideology of expropriation and wait for it to subside.
The coronavirus pandemic has finally provided the opportunity for Ramaphosa to further weaken this discourse, or even to completely abandon it, however subtly this may occur. Already “equal” redistribution is replacing “radical” redistribution. The competent Oom Cyril is well aware that expropriation has no substance when an economy is collapsing and propertied taxpayers and farmers become gold.
Brandaan Huigen, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin
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