Can Ramaphosa’s team do what’s needed to avoid poll loss?

As President Cyril Ramaphosa and his supporters wallowed in their victory at the ANC’s national elective conference, the rest of the country must be wondering if we have dodged the bullet of State Capture 2.0.

Certainly, Ramaphosa’s opponents – centred as they are in KwaZulu-Natal and deeply immersed in the radical economic transformation (RET) faction – would have been much worse for South Africa had they triumphed in the party’s leadership elections.

Their hopeful, disgraced former health minister Zweli Mkhize, may well have allowed the many state capture suspects off the hook and may have even reappointed the looters who wrecked all our state-owned enterprises. Who knows? The Guptas may even have flown back (through Waterkloof airbase, naturally) …

ALSO READ: Key moments in Ramaphosa’s presidency

Yet, we have to look at the ANC’s new “top seven” – including Ramaphosa himself – and wonder if they would, when it comes down to it, be any better than the bunch loyal to former president and looter-in-chief Jacob Zuma.

Ramaphosa has the murky Phala Phala scandal still hanging over his head; his deputy Paul Mashatile is not known as a member of the “Alex mafia” for nothing; national chair Gwede Mantashe has mismanaged his energy portfolio; secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has been the party’s clown and linked to dodgy benefits and his deputy, Nomvula Mokonyane, was found by the Zondo commission to have received backhanders from the Bosasa group of companies.

Will Ramaphosa be reluctant, because of the composition of this tainted executive, to pursue his “new dawn” campaign against corruption? He needs to maintain momentum on the corruption front – and ensure that anyone involved is brought to book… without fear or favour.

ALSO READ: Is SA better off with or without Cyril Ramaphosa?

Even his own supporters must feel the full might of the law if they are implicated in stealing.

Will he suddenly develop a backbone and decide to forego ANC unity in favour of not surrounding himself with backstabbers? Can we expect purges of useless ministers like Lindiwe Sisulu and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma?

Despite all the negatives at the Nasrec conference – which, like the ANC and the way it runs the country, was chaotic and riddled with dishonesty – there were signs that a new tendency may be developing in the organisation, which may be bad news for its entrenched careerist politicians.

There were multiple examples of senior provincial ANC leaders suddenly switching allegiance from Ramaphosa to Mkhize… and urging their delegates to follow suit.

The fact that Ramaphosa triumphed over the RET faction by a bigger margin than he did in 2017 shows that many of the delegates ignored their provincial executive instructions. This shows that the ANC at grassroots level is getting tired of the “big” men and women hijacking their mandate.

Not only is that a victory for democracy, it is a hopeful sign that, perhaps, the ANC leadership may just be shocked into paying attention to the little people.

Ramaphosa must be aware that his party has been on a downward slope for the past 10 years and that it risks becoming the official opposition in 2024. That’s not far off.

If he and the ANC want to avert that electoral disaster, they need to effect real changes and fix everything, from corruption to Eskom.

That won’t be easy, though, with the team Ramaphosa has.

READ MORE: Here’s the ANC’s top 7 officials – Ramaphosa re-elected president