Cyril Ramaphosa always late to the party

The ANC national policy conference in Nasrec this past weekend did not provide the fireworks that many thought it would.

In fact, it came very close to being normal and lacking the usual glued-to-the-television set kind of perverse entertainment that ANC conferences have tended to provide recently.

It also lacked the chaos of the previous weekend’s provincial congress in KwaZulu-Natal, where President Cyril Ramaphosa was almost drowned out by a chorus of boos.

At Nasrec, the delegates allowed him to say a lot of the sensible things he should have said and fought for years ago.

And therein lies Ramaphosa’s legacy, always coming too late to the party.

He arrived late at the presidency, some 20 years later than he should have when he was seen as a Nelson Mandela successor for the ANC’s presidency in 1997.

Although he became a billionaire in the next decade, his role in Marikana and his perceived close association with those seen as hogging South Africa’s wealth left him quite short of friends in the politics of the ANC, where factions were now the norm.

And he had to accept being part of a slate that brought Jacob Zuma to power.

And the following decade, the so-called “nine wasted years”, marked the time that Ramaphosa perfected the art of inaction and arriving late at the party.

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The organisational renewal that he now speaks of and the honesty that he displayed in being able to tell delegates that Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has said to him that “the failure of the government at municipality level is because of us, the ANC”, was refreshing to hear.

In fact, it might actually mark the first time in the history of the ANC’s 28 years in power that a sitting president has openly admitted that the party has failed its voters.

It is that kind of honesty that is needed to fix what is broken, but the president has left it too late.

There is a good chance that if he had spoken out during the “nine wasted years”, he would not have been around to be president today. And South Africa’s voters did grant him that get-out-of-jail card.

Business was also ready to forgive him for his silence during the looting of state resources and hollowing out of state institutions.

He had to wait his turn, it was reasoned. And when his turn came a year earlier than it was meant to because of Zuma’s early departure, the country waited with hopeful anticipation. And the country has been waiting since.

In the four years that his government has been in power, the only noteworthy thing that he has done, besides ducking plenty of knives aimed at his back, was guiding the country through the pandemic.

Even that was not without its faults because his comrades went to town with the public funds aimed at fighting the pandemic, right under his watch.

Unfortunately, the perceived orderly procession of the policy conference is not a signal of renewal. It is merely a signal that even though he does not have any friends in the ANC’s biggest voting bloc, KwaZulu-Natal, he still has enough friends to win a second term.

But the truth is even if he finishes this current term as president, he has wasted so much of the goodwill that was undeservedly given to him after the wasted years, that a second term would be a waste for the country and the progress it needs to make.

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