Cyril’s inaction on Lindiwe Sisulu is a problem

It is not surprising that one of the most frequent criticisms of Cyril Ramaphosa is that he is the “absentee president” or “missing in action”.

Those barbs will no doubt increase the longer he is seen to be tolerating the outright rebellious attitude of his Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu. There are two ways to look at this apparent inaction.

One is that he is confident in his own support within the ANC and across the broader country.

Sisulu and the like-minded clique of politicians and hangers-on who profess allegiance to radical economic transformation (RET) and orbit Jacob Zuma like faithful disciples may make a lot of noise but do they really have a support base?

The failure of the KwaZulu-Natal violence and looting to ignite a national insurrection in July last year is the clearest indication that many South Africans do not share the outrage about Zuma.

Another, more worrying, interpretation of Ramaphosa’s apparent inertia is that he is concerned that if he fires Sisulu, he will be making her a political martyr for the RET faction.

There is merit in that, especially because the grouping’s entire communication is premised around the alleged injustice it has suffered at the hands of Ramaphosa and the “captured” judiciary.

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ANC insiders have raised another intriguing possibility: that Sisulu is playing the RET faction to boost her own chances of winning the presidential nomination at the ANC’s end-of-year elective conference, but that she might well abandon them, much as David Mabuza did at Nasrec in 2017.

The problem with a lack of action against Sisulu is that her vicious attacks on the judiciary will assume a political weight they do not deserve and that many people will buy into the warped narratives that the ANC has “sold-out” the people to “white monopoly capital”.

That poison will clog the veins of our society for years.