Ramaphosa on course to become Mandela’s heir

CAPE TOWN

South Africa’s recently-elected President Cyril Ramaphosa may not be Nelson Mandela, but all the early indications are that he is Mandela’s true heir.

And if he continues in the manner that he has begun his presidency, he may well turn out to be one of Africa’s great sons.

Behind these observations lie more than the ‘honeymoon’ sentiment, which currently abounds in the wake of Jacob Zuma’s long-awaited departure.

They are largely based on an assessment of Ramaphosa’s conduct and his future intentions, as described in his recent State of the Nation address, plus the subsequent Parliamentary debate and his answer to that, along with several other factors that together make for a truly positive prospect.

ECONOMY
It is not that Ramaphosa has inherited a healthy economy and a healing country, as he would have if he had been SA’s second post-apartheid president.

Quite the opposite – the SA economy is struggling, barely managing 1-1.5 per cent annual growth, and there is a mounting agitation on the streets for the “better life for all” promised when Mr Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party took power 24 years ago.

The state is facing a huge 55.6 per cent GDP debt burden, with the country’s sovereign debt already at junk status, and major state-owned enterprises, such as the power producer Eskom – the largest utility on the continent – facing their own massive debt burdens.

Unemployment has dropped fractionally – officially around 26 per cent of jobseekers, though many have given up looking for jobs, and around 60 per cent for those under 25.

GREAT TASK
The country is restive, the land issue is burning and jobs are scarce.

For average South Africans, money is extremely tight and prospects, without a major turnaround, are grim.

These are among the many reasons South Africans wanted Zuma to be gone.

Now the burden of “fixing” the country falls on Ramaphosa.

But he seems ready for the task and is prepared to lead where others would perhaps fear to tread, as evidenced in his masterful handling of the wily Zuma to swiftly oust the latter, despite Mr Zuma’s capacity for delaying tactics.

POPULARITY
Mr Ramaphosa has the will, the skill, the growing political capital and the determination, it would seem, to drive through these very significant hurdles and put his country back on the path on which Mandela set it a quarter century ago.

Perhaps quite deliberately, but also because it is genuinely his style, Mr Ramaphosa has emerged in the short time that he has been President and president-in-waiting, as a real “man of the people”.

He takes daily walks in Cape Town, with throngs of ordinary people and some journalists collecting around him every time he stops – some have taken to jogging or walking alongside the president whenever he goes outdoors to take exercise.

Instead of projecting a belligerent spectacle of a government that did not care, as Mr Zuma did, Mr Ramaphosa comes across as a genuinely caring man with just the right skill-set to sort out the South African mess.

LAND
He is in all respects attempting to live and be the very thing that Mr Zuma was not, but which embodies the values and ethics of SA’s post-apartheid founding fathers and mothers, and most specifically those of Mandela.

His State of the Nation address announced many new initiatives from youth unemployment and unemployment in general, to jobs growth, economic recovery, re-engineering of SA’s manufacturing sector, sorting out its gutted state utilities and rejigging its vital mining sector.

On the touchy subject of land redistribution, which is far behind where it ought to have been, he was clear – like it or not, there will be expropriation of land without compensation because this issue affects millions of SA’s poorest, its land-dispossessed, and resolving the matter cannot be further delayed.

In South African terms, colonial and then apartheid-era land dispossession of indigenous people was the “original sin”.

"The pain, loss and deprivation caused by this historical inequity had to be addressed, and urgently so," he said.

There are many, mostly whites but others as well, who were not happy to hear that.

LAND GRABBING
But Mr Ramaphosa also made it clear there would be no “willy-nilly” land-grabs, as happened in Zimbabwe.

Instead there would be an inclusive programme to bring black farmers actively into the agricultural sector, allowing it to grow and contribute to the general fiscus while empowering the poorest and land-dispossessed and increasing food security.

Meanwhile, President Ramaphosa’s first budget as the country’s leader, presented today by a Zuma-appointee, was met with harsh criticism, even from some of the ruling party’s own allies.

While Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba said the budget was “tough but fair”, the immediate post-speech reception of it by opposition party leaders was largely hostile.

Almost all criticised a one per cent Value Added Tax increase as hitting the poorest hardest.

BUDGET
Despite that, another fuel levy increase pushing the price up a further US5¢, and some other revenue-generating streams, there was criticism that the national debt will balloon still further from its current 55.6 per cent of GDP.

Others criticised Ramaphosa for allowing Gigaba to present the budget at all.

Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters – vocal anti-Zuma opponents – was so opposed to Mr Gigaba’s presentation of the budget that the party refused to attend.

The official opposition Democratic Alliance tried unsuccessfully to prevent Gigaba from presenting the budget through a motion regarding a judicial finding that he lied and that he had been cited as a key player in state capture by more than one inquiry.