Fastidious Ramaphosa’s farm murder blunder in New York. Why?

By Alec Hogg

I am half way through the very readable Antony Butler biography on Cyril Ramaphosa, a must for anyone trying to understand South Africa's new leader. A key theme is Cyril's fastidious nature.

Many of Butler's sources attest to Ramaphosa's perfectionism that verges on being downright anal. One after another explain how it's the details that turn this man on. He is one of those admirable members of our species who needs to know how the sausage is made, not just eat it.

This makes Ramaphosa's comments in New York this week about SA farm murders difficult to absorb. With so much fake news about, I wondered whether a now widely circulated video had been tampered with. So double checked at source, the Bloomberg website. But there it is. Word perfect.

With potential foreign investors mulling behind him, Ramaphosa told the camera "There are no killings of white farmers in SA. There's no land grab in SA…" Cyril the perfectionist knows that's not true. So why say it? Are his lines of communication with the real world so poor? It makes him look like just another lying politician. He is so much better than that. Isn't he?