President Malema

Ramaphosa is on his way out. He will be lucky if he survives until his term expires in 2029. I don’t think he will.

Not that Ramaphosa is an angel; anything but. However, he is an enemy of Zuma, and doesn’t particularly like Julius Malema. His survival is dependent on neither of these two characters gaining a position of power in the ANC (or, rather, in any grouping that exercise state power). Because Phala-Phala hangs over his head.

Pkala-Phala is Ramaphosa’s Nkandla and his HIV/Aids. Nkandla left Zuma exposed to legitimate charges of corruption, which highlighted the state capture going on in the country under his watch. The ANC protected him, while he was at the height of his power, but when this power started diminishing, at the end of his term, his friends in the party start turning against him. This happened because they rank-and-file in the ANC realigned in line of the changing power-relations in the party.

The same happened with Mbeki. His controversial opinions about HIV/Aids, and its treatment, never really went away, once it has surfaced. As his term gradually nearing its end, his power inside the ANC diminished. He chosen exactly the wrong time to fire Zuma; a time when his influence in the ANC was at his lowest, because the realignment in the party has already started. Zuma was the rising force.

The ANC shield Ramaphosa against the implications of his public sin, which is Phala-Phala, at a time when he was at the height of his power in the ANC. Magashule was apparently the one convincing him not to do so when the former Chief Justice Ngcobo’s report finds that there is a strong prima facie case against Ramaphosa, and he seemingly considered resigning. Now Magashule has shifted his loyalties to Paul Mashatile. Ramaphosa is on his way out; Mashatile is the new force in the ANC.

But there’s another dimension to this. With each successive administration, the ANC has turned more-and-more fundamental; and specifically increasingly anti-White. The Mandela administration was “captured” in the spirit of reconciliation and the rules of settlement negotiated during the 1994 Constitutional transition. There were transformative policies, but these were relatively mild, and (at least partly) inclusive, rather than exclusive.

In spite of his radical image, Zuma is actually a pragmatist. He is inherently neither particularly fundamentally right nor left. Zuma’s agenda is driven by self-interest. Initially when he took up the throne, he willingly continue the ANC’s relatively mild policy agenda. It was only when his underhanded activities to protect himself against prosecution and to enrich himself, his family and his friends led to a direct conflict with civil society that he turned fundamentalist. It was only close to the end of his terms as President, and in the face of extreme resistance from civil society, that he changed his, and the ANC’s, tune about expropriation without remuneration.

The real turning point in Zuma’s psyche came when Ramaphosa won the 2017 race against his former wife, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma at the ANC Conference to become the party’s President. That led to Zuma being forced out of the Presidency before he concluded his full second term. Zuma was, and is, extremely anger about this, and about Ramaphosa labelling the time of his presidency as “nine lost years.”

From that point onwards, Zuma’s driving aim become to revenge his humiliation and loss of privilege.

Ramaphosa was apparently the “businessman-turned-President”. He was to be the Big Savour” of the country; the moderate, closely associated with Nelson Mandela and reasonableness during the transition phase of the country’s history in the late 1990s.

But Ramaphosa has never really been a businessman. Equity worth millions-upon-millions of rands were transferred to him in the period immediately following on the 1994 transition; partly because of the real desire of Big Business to buy goodwill from the new government, and partly under the unspoken threat of forced redistribution. Ramaphosa was a union-man, a socialist-turned-capitalist millionaire.

 Much like Zuma, I don’t think Ramaphosa actually have strong ideological orientations to the left – or – right of the ANC. He, too, is pragmatic. He, too, is driven by self-interest. But he was forced into fundamentalist positions by the majority inside the ANC, who was (and is) increasingly irritated and angered by (what they see as) White and international resistance to the extreme levels of corruption and self-enrichment rampant in the ANC.

However, Ramaphosa is in a difficult position. If the RNE grouping in the ANC succeeds in gaining the upper hand in the party, Phala-Phala returns. Not having access to the levers of state, for Zuma, implied that the charges from the time of the Weapons-deal could return, and landed him in jail. Not having access to the levers of state, for Ramaphosa, implied that Phala-Phala could return, and landed him in jail. The risk, for him, is high.

Ramaphosa cannot work with the EFF, because, if the ANC forms a coalition with that party, it will bring many fundamentalist back into the party, which threatens his “voting dominance” in the ANC. Also, he cannot risk having (the very popular) Julius Malema adding his presence to the RNE faction. His only choice to prevent this, is to work with the DA.

But the coalition with the DA is extremely unpopular in the ANC. Ramaphosa is losing that fight, especially as he is approaching the end of his term, and his grip on the ANC is gradually loosing. He is running out of options.

All of this taking place in the context of an ANC turning increarinsgly fundamentalist, and back to its anti-Western, socialist and anti-White roots.

Mashatile is the incoming power in the ANC. I know very little about him. However, I do know that he will probably, at some stage, reconcile with Julius Malema, and bring him back into the ANC. Mashatile, Mantashe and, frankly, the majority of the ANC, are not hostile to Julius Malema; in fact, they see him as an ideological ally. Question is actually: Does he tratens their own ambitions? If not, I’m sure, we can start talking about President Malema. Malema will then deputy Mashatile, just like Mbeki has deuptied Mandela, Zuma Mbeki and Mashatile Ramaphosa. As long as it does not harm their own prospects, that it what the majority of the ANC leader wants. So, what I am actually saying, is: Start talking about President Malema.

Image source: Financial Times