Cyril hints at early election date, confident of victory

During his most recent visit to New York as part of the United Nations General Assembly festivities, president Cyril Ramaphosa delivered a short address at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This was part of The David Rockefeller Lecture which is “awarded annually to a distinguished African from either the governmental or non-governmental sector,” according to the official website.

Following his address, Ramaphosa answered questions from the audience which featured the likes of Reverend Jesse Jackson, among others.

Land reform formed a large focus of the discussion but Ramaphsoa also touched on corruption, the economy, strategic partnerships with countries such as China and the future of the ANC.

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Here are a few highlights from Ramaphosa’s address.

On land reform: 

“And I have often said that the land issue was the original sin that was committed in South Africa when colonialists came. When they came, they took land from the indigenous people of the country, and over a number of years, laws were passed to prevent black people from owning land.”

“I’ve often said that the ANC, the party that I lead, was founded in 1912 around the land issue. The founders of the ANC got together and said we want to get our land back. And they engaged in negotiations and deputations to try and get a portion of the land back. And over time, they even crafted a charter through which they said the land must be shared amongst those who work it, meaning that there should be sharing of the land as there should be sharing of the wealth.”

“It is imperative that the land issue be addressed and be resolved. I have no doubt in my mind that we will be able to resolve this question and we will come out with a solution that could lead to win-win outcomes for all, for current landowners and for those who do not have land, just as we did when we resolved the apartheid problem, because we resolved it between those who had the vote and those who did not have the vote.”

On the economy: 

“Well, when we got into power, we inherited an economy which was structurally aligned toward serving the interests of the minority. The majority of the people of South Africa were not owners, controllers, or managers of the economy… So you had an economy that was skewed, from a structural point of view, toward serving just a minority.”

“Our position—the strength of the rand has also been a bit of a problem. With the increase in the oil price, our position has not been greatly improved. But with the measures that we have put in place now, we are hoping that we will be able to return our economy to growth. At the same time, we will continue with the restructuring of our economy to enable black people to become active participants in the economy of our country.”

On corruption: 

“Corruption started seeping into our body politic in our state-owned enterprises and a number of other government institutions. And that has led to a number of investors feeling that corruption is debilitating their enthusiasm to invest in our economy, together with other policy positions that had become inconsistent and uncertain… The other major issue that we’ve embarked on is to clean up, to clean up state-owned enterprises. State-owned enterprises account for about thirty percent of the economy of our country. And a number of them have been subjected to a number of malpractices and corrupt activities that were being perpetrated in quite a number of them at management level and at board level. ”

“Our clean-up act is both at public sector level as well as private sector level. And in the next few months, I’m sure that our state, our criminal justice system is going to be very busy in dealing with this matter.”

On the future of the ANC: 

“We have just emerged from a conference, the 54th conference of the ANC, where I was elected, together with my colleagues, where the ANC admitted that over the past few years it had lost quite a lot of its positioning in the sense where it had become distant from the people, where people had lost confidence in it. And this was clearly demonstrated in the past elections that we had where the support of the ANC went down.”

“And at that conference it resolved that it must renew itself—in other words, clean up its act. It must unite itself, but it must also rid itself of corrupt activities, both inside the party and also in the government that we lead.”

“So the ANC is finding traction once again. And I’m confident that it should be able to win the next elections quite easily, which will be held next year, before May of 2019. So we go to those elections renewed, united, and feeling much stronger than we have in the past.”

On China-Africa relations: 

“The issue of the Chinese coming into Africa and all that, yes, we are members of BRICS. BRICS is composed of  Brazil, China, Russia, and India, and South Africa… China clearly has embraced Africa in a way where it says we want to contribute to your growth, but obviously as a country they also want to trade with Africa.

“But at the same time, there are quite a number of other countries that have dealings with Africa. A number of countries hold forums and conferences with African countries, and bring them altogether. The UK does, France does, and a number of others. And so, Africa, as a growing continent, clearly, in dealing with its various partners, has to advance its own interests, but advance its own interests without sacrificing its own sovereignty.”

On enticing investors: 

“The uncertainty has been giving rise to, for instance, our policy positions on a number of areas, like, for instance, the mining charter. They have said you have had—you have proposed a mining charter in the past year or so, which would have prevented investments from taking place in South Africa, so they held back. We’ve now consulted extensively on the mining charter and we’ve resolved that to the satisfaction of a large portion of the mining industry… They complained about not releasing the telecommunications spectrum. And we’re now in a process of doing that.”

“The visas to enable people to come to our country, particularly businesspeople, were also a huge headache. And they have raised that continuously with me as I’ve been engaging with businesspeople that they are not able to bring their executives to look after their investments in the country. We’ve now addressed that, done and dusted. We’re just finalizing a few negotiations with a few countries.”

“And we’re now resolving quite a number of issues, including things like our electricity prices have been among the highest in the world, which we call administered prices. We’re resolving—going to be resolving that so that we can attract those companies that use a lot of electricity in their operations. ”

“And so one after the other of issues that businesspeople have raised with us we are addressing. We are being very proactive and being very, very positive and constructive because we want South Africa to, once again, be an attractive destination for investment.”

Click here to watch the full address.

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