With South Africans desperate for action that could put the country back on a path to success, the ANC is under pressure to implement its plans in a year in which President Cyril Ramaphosa will need all the backing he can get.
While Ramaphosa’s election as ANC president more than two years ago brought with it a tide of optimism, the clock is ticking for change.
Ramaphosa’s third January 8 statement as ANC president consisted largely of what he has already said, building a capable state being the ANC’s first priority for 2020. This is most urgently needed by SA’s ailing SOEs, which are quickly becoming a battleground for factions.
The statement dealt with the “great difficulties” faced by SOEs. But Eskom was the albatross around Ramaphosa’s neck as he addressed the party’s top brass and thousands of supporters in the pothole-ridden Northern Cape.
The lead-up to the event was marred by the crisis at the power utility, which ratings agencies consider as the biggest threat to SA’s economic future.
This crisis could lead Ramaphosa into a political storm as one of his allies in the fight against state capture, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan, is under pressure.
The resignation of Jabu Mabuza as Eskom chair on Friday was announced by the presidency before the ANC's annual, fund-raising gala dinner.
Ramaphosa said there was no “schism” between him and Deputy President David Mabuza about Eskom after the deputy president, in charge of the Eskom “war room”, threw what many saw as a curveball the day before. He reportedly told journalists that Ramaphosa was misled by the Eskom board and Gordhan about when load-shedding would take place.
This comment reportedly caused havoc, given Ramaphosa’s promise that the lights would stay on until mid-January.
The need for action at Eskom, was underscored when the World Bank last week revised down its economic growth outlook for SA to below 1% for 2020 due to concern about power supply.
Finance minister Tito Mboweni, who in 2019 released an unpopular proposal for reforms needed to grow SA’s economy, took to Twitter on the eve of the event to warn that procrastination and a failure to implement critical reforms would have dire consequences for the country.
“If you cannot effect deep structural economic reforms, then game over! Stay as you are and you are downgraded to junk status!! The consequences are dire,” Mboweni tweeted on Friday morning. It was time for action, the message rang.
Labour federation Cosatu president Zingiswa Losi added fuel to the fire at Kimberley’s Tafel-Lager Stadium, demanding that the rest of the Eskom board follow Mabuza in resigning. But the pressure is not only about Eskom. Losi said the resolutions taken at the jobs summit had to be implemented immediately, and the land question had to be dealt with.
“We remain in alliance with the ANC, but we want an ANC that’s sensitive to worker issues,” she said.
SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande raised the stakes, saying that the party wanted the legislation providing for expropriation without compensation to be passed this year and National Health Insurance should be implemented, no mean feat and something that will doubtlessly face resistance.
A lot of Ramaphosa’s remarks in his address were repetitive platitudes, such as that the ANC wants to strengthen its integrity commission. But there is one part of Ramaphosa’s plan to restore the integrity of the state, that is grinding ahead slowly: restoring the criminal-justice cluster that was brought to its knees during the Zuma presidency.
Arrests took place at the end of 2019 and more are expected in the year ahead.
Ramaphosa said the fight to end state capture would be intensified this year, as the ANC hoped to end state capture in all its forms and ensure that those responsible for it were held accountable and all money stolen from the state and public bodies was recovered.
“There should be no place to hide, anywhere in SA and the world, for criminals — whether in the public sector or private sector — who have stolen from our people,” the statement said.
But will this focus yield dividends for Ramaphosa in time, especially taking into account the project of keeping a factionalised ANC united ahead of the national general congress in June and the 2021 local government elections.
Zamani Saul, chair of the ANC in the Northern Cape, which was the first province to endorse Ramaphosa, told Business Day on Saturday when asked about the state of unity in the party that this was not an event, but a process.
“There are people who left Nasrec who were not happy with the outcomes and deliberately embarked on a pushback agenda to ensure that its current leadership led by President Cyril Ramaphosa is not going to achieve the objectives set by Nasrec to renew the organisation.”
“Some of us will have to account for things we have done in the past. And some of us may even end up in jail for some of the things we have done in the past,” Saul said.
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