Ramaphosa is adopting Stalingrad tactics used by his disgraced predecessor

The brave face with which the Ramaphosa administration initially met the Phala Phala farmgate allegations is beginning to show some worry lines.

There’s less grin, more grimace. Waiting for Arthur Fraser – the former State Security Agency head who waited more than two years to lay charges of presidential criminality – to drop the other shoe as promised, is taking its toll.

The stress is showing in missteps by Cyril Ramaphosa.

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The first major stumble is that he has engineered or drifted into what is potentially an enormously damaging conflict with the office of the Public Protector (PP).

On Wednesday, acting PP Kholeka Gcaleka announced that she was going to subpoena Ramaphosa over his failure to respond to allegations of violating the Executive Ethics Code.

This follows Ramaphosa’s failure to respond to allegations relating to Farmgate, despite having been given a four-week extension of the initial two-week deadline.

However, instead of meeting the new deadline, the president had asked for yet another extension. This was refused by Gcaleka.

A dire standoff – a sitting president failing to cooperate with one of the Chapter 9 institutions set up to protect the constitution – may yet be averted.

The presidency’s spokesperson says that Ramaphosa “is in communication with the PP legal team” to find an amicable solution.

But such obvious manoeuvring by Ramaphosa certainly does nothing for his already shrinking public credibility.

All that it does is beg the question of why he is adopting the Stalingrad tactics used by his disgraced predecessor, Jacob Zuma, to avoid legal accountability.

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The question that Ramaphosa’s backers will be asking themselves is how difficult could it be for an innocent president to provide a written response to the PP’s 31 questions?

Even if it is only to obfuscate, evade or plead amnesia?

Given the implausibility of Ramaphosa’s very limited explanations so far, one can understand his legal team counselling to zip his mouth.

If you’re in a hole, don’t dig. But a head of state cannot retreat into sullen silence.

By dint of his office, Ramaphosa owes the country an explanation beyond saying that he will be silent so as not to be perceived to be interfering with the Hawks’ belated investigation.

This already shaky defence is weakened further by the fact that Ramaphosa said that he would voluntarily meet the ANC’s integrity commission to brief them on the facts.

What would he say to the moral guardians of a terminally corrupt political party that he dare not say to the nation?

In any case, two months later, the integrity commission meeting still has not happened.

There is perhaps a dawning realisation in the Ramaphosa war room that earlier assumptions that he could avoid any public reckoning over Farmgate long enough to secure at the December leadership conference the second term that seemed easily within his grasp, may be mistaken.

A week is a long time in politics, the maxim goes. Ramaphosa has to make it through for another six months.

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If he is going to make the distance – without looking as guilty, or behaving as deviously, as the criminals he purports to be fighting – he’s going to have to change his tactics.

The willingness of many, perhaps most South Africans, was to give him the benefit of the doubt.

That goodwill is waning, despite the terrifying prospect of the radical economic transformation group grabbing power if he is ousted.

If Ramaphosa is innocent, he has to provide, soon, a credible public explanation of what happened at his farm.

If he continues behaving as he has been, in terms of his continued political future, a court finding of guilt will be unnecessary.