Survivor or roadkill? Ramaphosa is on the ropes

The government should resign if it can’t keep the lights on, and the infrastructure that delivers water and freight trains and ports for exports is collapsing, not to mention law and order and rising crime. One political party has been in power for 28 years — and there is simply no one else to blame — then the political price for this manifest failure in governance should be paid. 

That’s what I think as a citizen and that’s how I want to start this column. 

But as an analyst, I know better. 

A change in government is only useful if there is an alternative government in waiting. There isn’t. 

If President Cyril Ramaphosa and his administration were to fall on its sword (or were skewered through a motion of no confidence) the National Assembly would have to elect another president from its ranks and that poor soul would have to assemble a new cabinet from the current dismal and motley crew of ANC MPs (bar the two seats that the Constitution permits to be chosen from outside parliament). 

So that wouldn’t take us very far. 

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In another, even more far-fetched scenario, in which parliament fails to elect a new president, then an early election would have to be held. The Constitution makes provision for this in section 50. That would bring 2024 forward, which might be useful in speeding up the “second transition”, but would probably only yield a coalition government with the ANC still in office.

Things would only be better if the ANC were to have used the election process to replenish its stock of MPs and bring in some bright (younger) talent to give whoever is the president a better squad from which to choose his or her cabinet. 

And the “his or her” question would depend on who was now in the ascendant in the ANC, because Ramaphosa would be gone. This brings us back inevitably to Nasrec II, the sequel to 2017, which begins in a fortnight on 16 December. 

Whether the public like it or not, it is stuck with the ANC for the time being and the choices that it will make later this month will matter greatly to how the government performs in the future. 

The adverse findings against Ramaphosa in the Phala Phala preliminary investigation does not change this. But they will probably change the course of political history. 

The independent panel’s report may well be judicially reviewable — it’s approach is flawed in both law and fact, and it is poorly written and constructed. 

But politically it is dynamite, because it not only concludes that there is sufficient evidence of a serious violation of the law and serious misconduct by the president to justify the full impeachment process to proceed in parliament, but also casts doubt over the veracity of the president’s own account. 

A court may unpick the report in, say, a few months’ time. But politically Ramaphosa may be toast within weeks, if not days. If he decides he no longer has the stomach for the fight he may be on his way out of power by the time you read this. 

Even if he decides to fight on, and he still enjoys a sufficient majority of support in the crucial national executive committee (NEC) of the ANC, in whose hands his immediate political future will now lie, Ramaphosa’s victory at Nasrec II is no longer certain. 

The path to retaining power is complicated and the Phala Phala panel’s report has placed a dark cloud over it. Even if he somehow carries on and wins re-election, the public is inclined to ask “so what?” Would it make any difference to the government’s ability to tackle the poly-crisis threatening the country? 

In power, Ramaphosa has proven to be a slow-moving, often indecisive and risk-averse president, who lacks the courage to take the tough decisions. 

Could a “good result” at the ANC conference change this and inject energy, purpose and boldness into his presidential leadership? 

As the great Arsenal manager Arséne Wenger was fond of saying after his team had been defeated: “Today we played with zee handbrake on.” That is Ramaphosa — and the handbrake is his broken, rotten party. So, if he somehow survives and wins re-election as ANC president, will he release the handbrake? 

The ANC electoral process is a complicated moveable feast, because its electoral college changes every five years depending on the actual membership numbers in its thousands of branches across the land, which, in turn, determines how many delegates they get to send to the ANC national conference. 

Since 2017, the so-called Premier League of Free State, North West and Mpumalanga provinces has collapsed and its three Dons have either been arrested (Ace Magashule), defeated (Supra Mahumapelo) or disconnected from their provincial power base (deputy president David Mabuza). As a result, their gerrymandering of the system — boosting branch numbers in their provinces — has dissipated, and the three provinces no longer have the influence in the overall electoral college that they had five years ago. 

The balance of power has tipped back towards the traditionally big ANC provinces of Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape. And the ANC has suddenly dragged itself into the 21st century and become far more transparent about its numbers, thanks to the election committee chaired by former president Kgalema Motlanthe, who last week announced the results of nominations by branches.

This helps, to a point. We now know that, for instance, Ramaphosa was nominated by about 2 000 branches, while Zweli Mkhize, who is currently the only other candidate that will make it onto the ballot paper by virtue of the ANC’s new rules requiring a minimum level of branch nominations from at least two provinces, has about 800. 

That’s not quite the end of it, because there will be about 4 500 voting delegates — branches with more than 100 audited members are entitled to additional voting delegates, and there are additional “provinces” in the form of the three leagues (women’s, veteran’s, and youth) who get 25 votes each, plus 18 for each of the nine provincial executive committees.

In 2017, Ramaphosa inherited a divided house; three of the top six were from the other side and the full NEC was equally split down the middle. 

It has hampered his leadership, or he has chosen to let it be a drag factor. His misguided strategic choice was to try to reunite the ANC while rebuilding the democratic state — an impossible task. 

For 2022 to be a real victory, Ramaphosa has to improve on the overall ANC election result, otherwise he — and the country — are done for. That means his slate of reformers, branded as the “renewal” faction, need to secure at least four of what is likely to be a “top seven” (with an additional deputy secretary general) and that the NEC result should more or less match his level of support for the presidency — that is, at least 60% but ideally more than 70%.

As things stand, this seems unlikely. The era when the winning presidential candidate’s slate of running mates for the top positions would also prevail in a winner-takes-all manner is clearly over. So while Ramaphosa’s “radical economic transformation” opponents are in disarray, there are other candidates jostling for power.

Most obvious is Paul Mashatile, who is now a shoo-in for the deputy presidency and is playing a power-broking role in the run-up to the conference, and in the case of some positions there is more than one candidate from the reform camp, which would split their vote.

This is because Ramaphosa lost control of his re-election process, once again revealing his limits as a politician and his lack of real grasp of his own party. Just as in government, he lacks the necessary political muscle around him to secure and execute power. There is even a distinct possibility that he will end up with a worse result in these terms than Nasrec I; he may be isolated within the top echelon of his own party.

In this scenario, there will not only be no releasing of “zee handbrake”, but a real risk of a “handbrake turn” away from the even modest reforms of the past four years. Government decision-making may be further impeded as the ANC’s decline hastens. 

Ramaphosa’s supporters now concede that his decision-making tempo lacks urgency but, they argue, he always eventually gets there. 

He is the proverbial tortoise who always wins in the end. In politics, however, tortoises sometimes end up as roadkill and unless Ramaphosa can pull a hare out of the hat to get out of the way, a deadly juggernaut is bearing down on him. 

Richard Calland is an associate professor in public law at the University of Cape Town and a founding partner of political risk consultancy the Paternoster Group. His latest book, co-authored with Mabel Sithole of UCT, is The Presidents: From Mandela to Ramaphosa, Leadership in The Age of Crisis, in which they present five case studies in presidential leadership based on the five post-1994 democratic era presidents of South Africa.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.