PETER BRUCE | Ramaphosa loses grip as ANC factions paralyse leadership

As a rare surviving child of apartheid, the ANC is finally coming into its own — breaking down in the face of its ineptitude, costing society a fortune, dreaming up impossible “solutions” to the problems it is solely responsible for, and fighting with its own shadow.

You may have been fortunate enough to have missed a much-heralded event last Saturday after the ANC had told us it would announce its mayoral candidates for some of the country’s biggest metros and towns. I didn’t miss it but watched in total confusion as the party’s secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, with President Cyril Ramaphosa and party chair Gwede Mantashe standing by clapping like seals at each name announced, called the anointed candidates up to the podium for a photograph with Ramaphosa.

Except he didn’t really. It turned out, at the event, that the party had been unable to agree on a single candidate for any of the mayoralties involved. Instead, Mbalula introduced 42 candidates, including dear old Frank Chikane, for just eight metros. Forty-two candidates! The party’s factions, including Mbalula’s and deputy president Paul Mashatile’s, had been unable to agree.

And it’s clear they won’t, ever. The ANC is finished: it’s in power and in office, but it’s out of control. Certainly Ramaphosa no longer commands the party. He has wasted his opportunity. Just a few days earlier he held a summit with big business that ended with a ringing declaration to create 1-million extra jobs by 2030 and lift economic growth to 3% by 2030. If you think you’ve heard those numbers before, you have.

Just after the mayoral debacle deputy secretary general Nomvula Mokonyane said the ANC was considering joining Joburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni into one giant “megatropolis”, an insane idea that borrows from Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma’s catastrophic district development model, which draws small and mostly collapsed towns and villages into just one dysfunctional authority.

You can see the attraction of the megatropolis idea, though — it would have a vast budget; the comrades could eat, and, at the same time, it would remove control of Joburg from Helen Zille if she wins the city on November 4.

To top off the cascade of drivel from the ANC in the past week, the party launched its local government elections manifesto on Sunday. It promises to cut the R110bn owed by municipalities to Eskom by at least 30% — that’s R33bn, roughly the size of the entire basic education budget this year.

It’s all nonsense. Pure fantasy. There’s almost no point listening to a word Ramaphosa says anymore, because he can’t deliver. Even reform in electricity, by some distance the easiest of the tasks he has set himself, could be halted in its tracks.

This time next year he’ll be entirely crippled politically as the ANC leadership contest looms in December 2027. As has become the ANC norm, he is unlikely to survive as head of state much past January 2028 unless his brother-in-law, Patrice Motsepe, puts a hand up for the job.

All I hear is that that’s not going to happen, and if he doesn’t go out and start buying himself a party faction, as did Ramaphosa in 2017, then this time next year Mashatile will be a clear front-runner.

There’s big trouble coming for this country if that happens, and the two constituencies that most rely on a functioning and clean government to survive, business and the poor, have no answer. Big business has thrown its lot in with Ramaphosa — it feels it has no choice — and the poor are easy prey for populists.

The left identifies the problem but fails to provide the answers. Its most consistent and eloquent voice, Business Day columnist Duma Qubule, suggests only a Marshall Plan flood of money or massive social upheaval can solve our problems, or at least wake us up to them. To the right, the DA promises clean, efficient management.

Both fall short. Good management and more money would help the destitute, but a clear plan is missing. The only sure way is to grow the economy, and we are too small a market on our own to encourage the establishment of new businesses.

We need instead to be more ambitious and set reachable goals. One would be to dramatically raise our exports, from just 34% of GDP to above 50%. If we clear any possible impediment to reaching that target, we might be in with a chance.

• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.

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