Ramaphosa masterfully played his performance at the commission

At the end of an extraordinary two-day period in which the president of the country gave evidence around the biggest looting in its history, South Africans were left divided, and a little perplexed, about what Cyril Ramaphosa actually said, or meant.

After all, he, as the then deputy president, should have been aware of some, or all, of the moves to capture the state by Jacob Zuma, his network and their cronies, the Guptas – the ins and outs of which have been probed by the Zondo Commission.

There are some who refuse to believe Ramaphosa’s account that he was, effectively, a “fifth columnist” within the ranks of the ANC, biding his time until he could build up enough strength to carry out a palace coup and get rid of Zuma and his RET (radical economic transformation) clique.

Yet this is, indeed, what Ramaphosa and his supporters managed to do at the party’s watershed elective conference at Nasrec in 2017.

There are as many others who, listening to Ramaphosa’s testimony – which, apart from anything else, showed clearly that the ANC is the supreme organ in this country – would have wondered whether this was not just confirmation of what they had feared all along… that this was more old ANC corrupt wine in a new Ramaphosa bottle.

But one cannot deny that it was a supremely confident Ramaphosa on the stand in front of Zondo – just the right combination of humility, confession and commitment to making things right.

Just the sort of thing you’d expect – as an honest, law-abiding South African – from the man leading your country… now and in the future.

In that respect, Ramaphosa masterfully played his performance at the commission, looking every inch a presidential candidate.

And, with his eye on a second term in 2022, this was not evidence, it was campaigning.