John Matisonn: Ramaphosa's legacy - the republic of no consequences

Key topics:Prosecutors dodged audits; weak reform follow-throughFailing ministers shielded despite governance lapsesModest gains mask lack of deep structural reform.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.On the Monday morning after the 2026 SONA, Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubaya told a story that encapsulates why the Ramaphosa government is not fundamentally reforming, though it is slowly fixing some problems.Kubaya told Radio 702 that she recently discovered, with shock of course, that Ramaphosa’s instruction which she conveyed a year ago to the NPA, that every prosecutor undergo lifestyle audits, had not been implemented. The prosecutors had been fighting it for a year, claiming privacy issues, without her knowledge.It’s one of countless examples. A government fully committed to reform would insist on report back mechanisms. The implications of prosecutors avoiding lifestyle audits instead of welcoming them should ring alarm bells and prompt immediate intervention. .Read more:.South Africa’s economy turns corner, but big reforms still needed: Katzenellenbogen.Kubaya and recently retired National Prosecuting Authority head Shamila Batoyi should have faced the wrath of the president, and heads should have rolled. Instead, after a year of prosecutors in charge of key prosecutions with clouds over their heads, we’re back to square one.The same ingredients marked the SONA: worthy ambition accompanied by a failure to report on why reforms did not happen or interrogate who was responsible.Sending the army to do police work in crime hotspots is better than nothing, but not much. Soldiers are not trained for policing, and the likelihood of incidents of excessive force without leaving behind a safer community is high.Special task forces for police, water, electricity, Johannesburg and eThekwini will do more lasting good, but they too avoid the permanent fix that comes from putting the right people at the top of each relevant entity, starting with cabinet ministers and mayors.Ramaphosa’s “reforms” largely shift power to the presidency; the presidency in turn ropes in the private sector, which is all too willing to get what it can back on track. Meanwhile, Gwede Mantashe and Angie Motshekga, the ministers of mining and defence, where government failure has been spectacular, are protected. Police Minister Senzo Mchunu is on suspension, only because maverick KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi left the president no choice.Each of these three ministers was crucial to Ramaphosa’s victory over the Jacob Zuma forces to become and remain president. They are royal game. Mchunu’s career is almost certainly finished as a result of the police corruption revelations, but that reduces the president’s political room to manoeuvre still further.Nevertheless, it’s important to acknowledge that things look better in many respects than they were. The economy has ticked up, the bond market is signalling market confidence, leading to a fall in our borrowing costs. Some of the most broken things are getting fixed, like electricity. As Ramaphosa’s presidency enters the home stretch, the outlines of his legacy are in view. He aims to be remembered for steering South Africa from a one party dominant democracy to coalition government peacefully, while shifting power from an ineffective ANC cabinet to the presidency and the private sector.His primary aim, evident in the SONA, is to keep what ANC unity is possible as it declines, while keeping the constitutionalist wing of the ANC at the helm without splitting the party.But there is another reason he has not truly been a reformer. It’s not in his temperament. He has not immersed himself in the detail, confronted and fired those needing firing, or introduced a new leadership generation of skilled professionals with integrity.He probably knows major changes are essential for the survival of the country. Police require a major cleanout. Intelligence probably needs to be closed and restarted from scratch. But he does not wake up every morning thinking what he can fix today.If he were wedded to reform, the SONA message would have been different in at least three ways.First, failing ministers, generals and other top officials found to be incompetent or corrupt would have been fired and replaced. Second, new promises would have been accompanied by the reasons the last ones were not kept, with accurate data showing by how much.And third, we would have been told how badly we are doing in relation to our capacity, and to peer countries in Africa and globally. By African standards, our slightly improved growth rate is still abysmal.In corridor conversations after the speech, more seasoned analysts, politicians and diplomats speaking on condition their names were not used, accepted it as given that the Defence Ministry does not take its policy from the presidency or Department of International Relations and Cooperation. This explains why Ramaphosa was ignored when he ordered Iran off the recent naval exercise, and appears to mean civilian control of our military is badly bent if not broken. .Read more:.Mills and Hartley: The ANC’s slide – quicker than a minister dodging a scandal.They also believed that the announcement that the electricity transmission company would be independent of Eskom surprised the Electricity Minister. The announcement contradicted the minister’s pronouncement only days earlier. He was shocked, but would not block it once formally announced by the president. The impetus to undermine the president’s preference came from Eskom, according to my sources. Transnet is doing the same to slow walk rail reform, trying to maintain control of where the revenue stream goes, sources in that sector tell me.Hopefully, rail reform will also muddle through, but as they say, it’s a hell of a way to run a railroad.Reformers do not allow ministers to go rogue.

John Matisonn: Ramaphosa's legacy - the republic of no consequences

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