I have a high regard for Frans Cronje, the man who leads those hardy and courageous souls at the IRR. As his livelihood depends on blocking out the noise and getting to the nub of South Africa’s chaotic political scene, we should all take Frans’s insights very seriously. Especially if they conflict with the common narrative.
Last week the IRR chief visited Cape Town where our political correspondent Donwald Pressly buttonholed him. What transpired was a cold shower for those confident the #GuptaLeaks emails will destroy SA president Jacob Zuma’s network of patronage and corruption.
Crucially, Cronje reckons behind the headlines a deal has already been struck between Zuma’s deputy Cyril Ramaphosa and the ex-Mrs Zuma. This involved expanding the Top Six to a Top Nine – and creating a balance of power between them to stop the escalating ANC conflict over its internal presidential race. My view: If ever SA needed its own Emmanuel Macron, now’s the time.
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Donwald Pressley writes: “Frans Cronje believes there is a cliché – an utter nonsense actually – in the public domain that the flurry of Gupta emails linking President Jacob Zuma and his family to all manner of dodgy state deals with this infamous family will hasten the end of this ANC administration.
“There is another view,” he told me.
There was a widespread fear in the ANC that if the party’s leaders are forced to fall on their swords, this would be dangerous: “Right across the party (there is a belief) that is a dangerous principle to establish.” This powerfully unites ANC leaders in a “common fear of behind held accountable publicly”.
Cronje – during a visit to Cape Town – said he had told his wealth management clients that “with or without Mr Zuma, South Africa is not necessarily in a better or worse position. He is such a caricature…his association with the Guptas deepens that caricature to such an extent that there is a mania of identifying him as the country’s greatest problem…that we are in a recession because of him and the Guptas. It is complete nonsense. He has certainly contributed to many crises and deepened others but to give him credit for the recession is to give the man far too much credit.”
Far from the ANC losing power or the current administration being replaced by a new set of ANC leaders, Cronje says South Africa is about to witness ‘a false start’, which will give the country some hope – in the short term.
The country is obsessed with the race between Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, but he believes that a unity deal has already been struck.
This involved Ramaphosa and Dlamini Zuma on a ticket, with one or the other taking the presidency. Whoever did not take the presidency – and the two would not oppose each other at the December elective conference – would take the bigger slice of the Top Six. But he believed the Top Six would become Top Nine. The loser of the presidency would get five of nine slots creating a balance of disunity.
The unity deal would take the ANC through to the national election in 2019 with the required ‘bounce’. That “freezes out” the possibility of a ruling DA/EFF coalition in 2019 as the ANC would probably get in the upper 50s.
So, Cronje reckons, SA will totter along until then, with the ANC kicking the can down the road until after that election, probably in 2020, 2021, 2022 as the new administration will not be able to overcome the ideological schisms.
The new administration would not be able to carry out much overdue structural reforms required to promote growth, new jobs and investment. That is when the social upheaval – which will eclipse the protests against Zuma – will really start.”
Whew, some seriously depressing stuff. As ever in South Africa nowadays, the best approach is to hope for the best, but always to prepare for the worst. That way the inevitable surprises might even have some upside.
