President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)_
SCORE: B
From surviving an internal plot inside the ANC to oust him at the party’s national general council (NGC), standing up to incecant attacks from United States bully Donald Trump and staying firm on Israel over its genocide in Gaza, President Cyril Ramaphosa appears to hace cemented his position and may become the first president to serve two full terms in recent times.
His predecessors Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki couldn’t finish their terms, recalled by the ANC as factionalism resulted in their abrupt removal from the Union Buildings. Mbeki was recalled after he lost the ANC election in Polokwane in 2007 and left office a year later. Zuma was recalled in February 2018, barely two months after Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, whom he backed to replace him, narrowly lost the ANC leadership race to Ramaphosa.
Once described as a “do nothing president” who started commission after commission at the slightest provocation, Ramaphosa has in this term shown that he can lead — if put in the spotlight. It also helps him that this is his last term as president of the country, so he has nothing to lose. Ramaphosa has also kept the government of national unity (GNU) together despite sharp differences with the Democratic Alliance over National Health Insurance (NHI), broad-based black economic empowerment and the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act.
In the process, the president earned the respect of former critics such as Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, the former Economic Freedom Fighters man, who proclaimed that he had been “misled” about the president. Meanwhile, white minority lobby groups Afriforum and Solidarity were pushing the white genocide lie, with a few Afrikaners migrating to the US at the invitation of Trump. Ramaphosa stood firm in the face of attempts to cast South Africa as a racist country, and travelled to the White House to debunk the myth of the “slaughter”of whites.
But the establishment of the Madlanga Commission into corruption in the criminal justice system is probably the best move of his entire presidency. The commission has made us see how deep the rot is in the system, with criminals linked to current and former cabinet ministers running the show.
If Ramaphosa had fired Police Minister Senzo Mchunu without establishing the commission, we would probably never have known how rotten the system was. He literally threw Mchunu, his ally at the 2017 Nasrec conference, under the bus. But the masterstroke for Ramaphosa was taking opposition leaders in the GNU on a bosberaad in Magaliesburg to get their support to see to the end of the term of the coalition.
If it weren’t for the Phala Phala and CR17 scandals, which refuse to go away, and the badly performing ministers from the ANC, whom he appointed through the party’s patronage system, Ramaphosa would be an A+ president.