John Matisonn: Ramaphosa’s power drains away

Key topics:Ramaphosa faces lowest point of presidency amid leadership doubtsANC anger after praise of DA councils sparks fierce backlashMbeki rift and corruption failures deepen ANC decline.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By John Matisonn.President Cyril Ramaphosa’s failure to lead has brought him to the lowest point in his presidency and a Sunday Times headline that he is “in the departure lounge”, but there is no clarity if and when his position might be challenged. Criticism over his high praise of DA councillors compared to those of his own party compelled him to hold a rare media interview to defend himself. His most illuminating answer on Thursday night came after he explained that he had told ANC councillors last week: “You must stop stealing peoples’ money.”The SABC’s political editor, Mzwandile Mbeje, reminded him that he had made the same appeal countless times before, asking: “Why didn’t they listen?”Mbeje was right. ANC public representatives at all levels of government have defied the president quietly for seven years, and that defiance has increased across both party and government.Last week his most admired living predecessor, ex-president Thabo Mbeki, authorised a critique of the presidency for risking financial abuse at the National Dialogue, and accused it of trying to take over and collapse the process.Ramaphosa’s office replied angrily that the allegations were “absolute rubbish”. Relations between the two men are at their worst level ever, but does it matter any more? The faux pas that forced him into damage control mode came earlier in the week when he told several thousands of ANC town councillors their DA counterparts were doing a better job than they are. “Those municipalities that do best are not ANC-controlled municipalities … they are often DA-controlled municipalities,” he said. “We want to go and see what Cape Town is doing.” .Read more:.Ramaphosa doubles down on BEE as "constitutional imperative" amid economic struggles and fierce criticism.The fallout from such a public insult to his own party officials was so great that ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula could not quell it on his own, and Ramaphosa asked the SABC to interview him. He had not said the DA was better at everything, he explained. He was referring only to their clean audits. The DA, he said, was better at compliance, but the ANC was still better at transformation. It was too late. On Saturday, announcing her nomination by the DA as their candidate for mayor of Johannesburg, Helen Zille, not surprisingly, agreed with him, thanking the president for his “endorsement”.ANC social media lit up in rage, though more than a few defended him saying the truth that ANC councils were overtaken by corruption should be faced. But the president’s diminishing authority has been a steady path, in part because he used it so little. It reached its most serious consequences in government recently, when incidents involving generals in both the police and the Defence Force undermined the chain of command and joint cabinet responsibility without consequences.The steepening decline of the ANC is both caused by and reflected in the waning power of the president. His allies defy him, his subordinates undermine him. Max Boqwana, the CEO of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, explained how relations between the foundations and the government broke down at a recent Thabo Mbeki public school of African and international affairs event in Tshwane. At the direction of Mbeki, who sat on the stage as he spoke, Boqwana said the foundation had earlier defended the organisers against accusations of likely financial abuse. “I know how you comrades behave,” Boqwana said he was warned by a trade union leader before the foundation withdrew. “You have interesting methodologies of skimming money from the government. One way is self-created emergencies so that you can get money quickly but you don’t have to plan a transparent process of how to spend it. It gives you an opportunity to do all manner of things with that money.”Boqwana said at the time he disputed this, but “five days later, we were asked to do exactly what we were accused of.”That’s when the foundation decided to withdraw from the convention. “We had been working on this for thirteen months,” Boqwana said. “They arrived three weeks before August 15 and said they were going to drive the process. They said they would be ready in eight days. In the meeting one of them looked at his phone and said ‘R28million has just come in.’ “We said this is exactly what we’re being accused of. We do not want to be close to a process like that.”Boqwana objected that the Nitonal Dialogue would now be “government led so government can deal with its own problems.”In his interview, Ramaphosa attempted to take the initiative, saying government is making good progress in breaking down the silos between departments and making SA more investor friendly. He laid out an aggressive travel schedule after the New York General Assembly, where he had 154 requests for meetings, with visits to Indonesia, Malaysia, Europe and Switzerland, as well as several African states.Ramaphosa’s reply to the question, “why didn’t they listen?” goes a long way to explaining the failure of his presidency. “I was evangelising,” he replied, adding optimistically that this time councillors would listen, perhaps because they know so many of them will lose their jobs at the coming election. As the British might say, the ANC “has form.” Promises to finally stop corrupt ANC leaders have been broken repeatedly, as the broadcaster’s question indicated.The president was evangelising, when his job is to lead. Evangelising is the task of the clergy, while a president’s job is to make decisions and lead decisively, nurturing talent and firing wrongdoers. Instead of leading, Ramaphosa outsourced too many decisions to share the responsibility: commissions of inquiry for corruption, the courts, inter-ministerial committees, the ANC’s National Executive Committee.The direction was set at the start of his presidential term when he asked a panel to choose the National Prosecuting Authority head, which was clearly the critical job in proving that Thuma Mina meant something. .Read more:.RW Johnson: Why the ANC’s decline now looks inevitable.Instead he proved it was just a slogan. Now that Shamila Batoyi nears the end of her seven year term without the conviction, sentencing and imprisonment of any of the top names in State Capture, who is accountable? It was the president’s responsibility to ensure that the process got us the best result, and he failed.Those years can’t be recovered. Our politics are already focussed on the next round of miscreants in government that will emerge before the Madlanga Commission.Mbeje asked about another thorny issue for the ANC’s political future, the announced decision of the ANC’s tripartite alliance partner, the South African Communist Party, to run candidates that will compete with ANC candidates. As usual, the President acknowledged the longstanding dispute but remained optimistic. “We are cascading towards an understanding,” he said, smiling.Leadership is like a muscle. If you don’t exercise it, it slips away. Use it or lose it. His loss of power has been disguised by his undeniable likeability and charm, especially when compared to the poor appeal of those around him. At least, we think, he is a constitutionalist, he knows right from wrong, he respects our best days when Madiba was around.There is no guarantee his successor will share any of these attributes.

John Matisonn: Ramaphosa’s power drains away

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