Calm down, the state of SA isn’t Ramaphosa’s fault

It is the second anniversary of former president Jacob Zuma’s final love letter to the country, ending his nine-year romance with his turmoil-ridden office. In the weeks preceding his resignation that fateful Valentine’s Day evening, the country was on edge and so were the markets. If you read the papers the following day, you’d say the nation was celebrating.

Then-deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, a media darling whose social capital made him popular among the affluent, had all but secured his seat at the helm. “Ramaphoria” set in.

Surely a billionaire as a president was less likely to be corrupt, people were saying. He’s a businessman, he knows the economy and how it can be revived. He speaks well, they all gushed, and he’s a philanthropist, a former unionist and a liberation struggle veteran. To top it all, he is, at the very least, better than his predecessor.

But now that we have seen what an economy growing at less than 1% looks like, it has become common to cry foul of the Ramaphosa magic, which initially lifted markets and strengthened the rand.

Perhaps we have too narrow an understanding of how to break an economy and how long it takes to achieve peak pandemonium.

It reminds me of US President Donald Trump being praised for presiding over the lowest unemployment rate in a decade and being lauded for reviving the US economy.

Democrats and economists were quick to rebuff these rather simple cheerleaders by explaining that it was far more likely that former president Barack Obama simply left behind him a well-oiled machine, enhanced by sound monetary policies which set the economy in motion.

Similarly, it has been said that the Zuma era of “radical economic transformation”, an era of bold, unapologetic corruption, alienated foreign investors and drew the attention of the ratings agencies.

I won’t try to argue that he oversaw the most state corruption of any president, because I don’t get my news on Twitter, but I would say it’s perhaps a little disingenuous to form a view that everything Ramaphosa has done since taking office is solely responsible for the current state of the economy.

But I’m not of the opinion that he has the best Cabinet we’ve seen, nor has he made any decision I’d point out as distinguishably good in a way that is evident in our daily lives.

The national minimum wage, free higher education for the poor and the contentious land expropriation Bill are all products of the Zuma era which are deemed costly policies that will turn SA into a Zimbabwe. The same can be said for the National Health Insurance Bill.

We have yet to see what we’ve got ourselves into. People certainly celebrated too soon last year and now they have begun to blame Ramaphosa for their shrinking wallets. They were as wrong then as they are now.

Here’s hoping this billionaire can put our money where his mouth is.

But, in the meantime, you all really need to calm down.

We are still feeling the effects of our ex-Valentine and it will take more than just the man at the top to turn things around.

Simnikiwe Hlatshaneni.

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