I still remember the day so well. Mondli Makhanya, then Sunday Times Editor, and I were having lunch in Rosebank and, as usual, politics was the topic of our discussion.

The year, I think, was 2008 or 2009; Jacob Zuma was already ANC president, but not yet our Head of State. Mondli, who has been very consistent on these matters over the years, was highly critical of Zuma, whom he did not consider presidential material. Since Mondli had been uniformly viciously critical of Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi during the years in which I had known him, I had begun to think that perhaps he was less forgiving of leaders who came from his home province of KwaZulu-Natal.

Like many others in the country at the time, I had been successfully seduced by an affable and charismatic Jacob Zuma. Yes, I said to Mondli, the man has made horrible mistakes along the way and shown serious lapses of judgement, but he would have learned from those incidents and had the potential to be much more sensitive to the wishes of ordinary men and women in the country.

More importantly, I resented very deeply what looked like the abuse of State resources by the Mbeki government to harass and victimise Zuma in a desperate effort to deny him a shot at the presidency.

Over the next few years, I was to realize how well Zuma had managed to fool us as a people, how terribly wrong I was about him and how right Mondli was about him throughout the years. To say that Zuma has been a bitter disappointment for South Africa would be a major understatement. The man has been downright disastrous as president and has proved to be a major liability. He has done incalculable harm to Brand South Africa.

Not only has he considered his rise to the presidency to be an opportunity to enrich himself and those close to him, but he has also thoroughly compromised many Government institutions and State-owned companies by, among other things, ensuring that the most pliable – and, often, the least qualified or competent – individuals were strategically appointed to them.

He has proved to be thoroughly a tribalist or provincialist, too: except for manipulable Des van Rooyen, all his Finance Ministers have been men from KwaZulu-Natal, with the current Deputy Minister of Finance also being from the “Zulu Kingdom”. Both former National Director of Public Prosecutions Mxolisi Nxasana and current incumbent Shaun Abrahams are from KwaZulu-Natal, and two ladies believed to have personal links to him, Ellen Tshabalala and Dudu Myeni, were appointed Chairpersons of the SABC and SAA Boards respectively without the requite experience or education.

As his term as ANC president neared its end, Zuma – and the majority of ANC members in his province – wanted to ensure that only somebody with roots in the “Kingdom” would succeed him. To that end, they worked tirelessly – but failed – to get his former wife, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to be elected his successor, in an effort to deny Cyril Ramaphosa the presidency. The plan seemed to have been conceived shortly after the ANC’s 53rd conference which took place in Mangaung, subsequent to which Dlamini-Zuma was strategically placed at the helm of the African Union to elevate her stature ahead of the ANC presidential contest.

Where once Zuma and his supporters had argued that ANC tradition was that the deputy president was the logical successor to the incumbent, conveniently they abandoned that argument and denied that such a culture existed.

Ramaphosa’s election as ANC president should mark the end of a terrible chapter in our democratic era and the beginning of a new one. Unlike his predecessor, he is known to be a constitutionalist who is likely to champion good governance and a meaningful partnership involving the Government, business and labour. An astute businessman, he will no doubt place a deserved emphasis on growing and transforming our economy.

The concerns that have been expressed by some commentators about the composition of the leadership surrounding Ramaphosa in the ANC top six are legitimate. Some of the individuals surrounding him are not exactly known for their shining credentials as anti-corruption crusaders, and some have featured prominently in the recent Gupta-leak e-mails. They are, therefore, unlikely to share his enthusiasm to throw the book at those allegedly behind our rampant corruption.

While legitimate, those concerns should not be exaggerated. The ANC leadership is made up of more than just the five men and one woman at the apex of the organisation. It also comprises the 80-member National Executive Committee (NEC), which is the highest decision-making body between conferences. There are men and women on that structure who are just as keen to rid the organisation and the country of corruption and who would like to rescue whatever equity remains of Brand ANC.

The narrow margin by which Ramaphosa won the contest against Dlamini-Zuma – who was volubly supported by some of the most disagreeable and controversial characters in our politics – also raises the understandable concern that there were almost as many delegates at the ANC’s 54th national conference who were opposed to him as those who supported him. It is understandable that some people will worry that Ramaphosa may not find the kind of support within his organisation that he needs to redirect the country’s fortunes.

While understandable, that concern ignores the fact that, according to various surveys conducted across the country in the run-up to the conference, the vast majority of ANC members in all nine provinces preferred Ramaphosa for the ANC presidency. The small margin of his victory is indicative of the determined efforts by those with vested interests who were threatened by the prospect of a Ramaphosa presidency, among them Jacob Zuma, who worked very hard to persuade as many ANC branches and delegates as possible not to support his candidature.

Now that a Ramaphosa presidency is a reality, many of those who were successfully lobbied against him will turn their backs on Zuma, soon to be yesterday’s man, and seek to be in Ramaphosa’s good books. They will work even harder to ingratiate themselves to him and his fellow officials in order to improve their chances of deployment into cushy positions in government, the public service and State-owned companies.

As often happens in the ANC, in the coming months and years those to be elected onto the leadership of the various leagues – Women’s, Youth and Military Veterans – and provincial structures will most likely be made after the image of the leader. That means that, in the months and years to come, the number of overtly pro-Ramaphosa individuals in strategic positions within the ANC will increase, thus making it possible for him to re-orientate the organisation and, hopefully, to advance South Africa’s interests.

Kaizer M. Nyatsumba is a writer and a senior business executive in Johannesburg.

Posted on: 02 JANUARY 2018 | Author: Kaizer Nyatsumba