By Sipho Seepe
“Same old, same old” is the punchline of most commentaries on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s opening address. The phrase is duplicated for emphasis. Some commentators went as far as to list up to 20 promises Ramaphosa had made, none of which were delivered.
It could be argued that the fact that the pledges remain unmet necessitates them being repeated. There is nothing new about the priorities spelt out in Ramaphosa’s opening.
The drive to reduce poverty, tackle the cost of living and build a capable and ethical development state has been repeated ad nauseam since the dawn of democracy. It is for this reason that they found expression in the National Development Plan.
The commitments were never delivered. As a matter of fact, South Africa has become a poster child of global poverty and inequality.
The downside of the repeated failure typecast Ramaphosa as a habitual liar. Having lost all credibility and believability, his promises count for naught.
Regarding this, columnist Barney Mthombothi warned a while back: “Apart from his well-earned reputation as a coward, Ramaphosa is cultivating another unfortunate trait. He’s telling too many falsehoods … Most of them seem unprovoked and unnecessary.” (Sunday Times, December 13, 2020)
With the ANC having been dealt a mortal blow at the 2024 national elections, Ramaphosa’s opening address was always not going to be easy.
William Shakespeare’s phrase, “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”, arguably comes close to providing a glimpse into the amount of stress, anxiety, doubt and worry that Ramaphosa must have suffered in his preparation for the opening of the Parliament of the seventh administration. Some realities cannot easily be airbrushed from political reality.
First, the ANC enters the new political landscape as a wounded party. It has been stripped of its claim to be a leader of society. For the first time in 30 years, the ANC cannot do as it pleases. Its decisions must be endorsed by parties outside the tripartite alliance it leads.
The SACP and Cosatu have expressed their disappointment with the decision of the ANC to form the so-called government of national unity with the DA. Having supported Ramaphosa despite his failures, both partners feel betrayed.
Second, the misguided notion that Ramaphosa was more popular than the ANC has been exposed to be, at best, a figment of fertile imagination and at worst, a blatant lie. A massive loss of 17% in one electoral cycle would have sent any decent leader running for cover.
As he is wont to do, Ramaphosa has tried to mask the cataclysmic electoral performance by arguing that the voters have “through their votes, determined that the leaders of our country should set aside their political differences and come together as one to overcome the severe challenges that confront our nation”.
This is an attempt to airbrush the ANC’s failure out of history. The fact of the matter is that the ANC has been a failure for the past 30 years. The voters had given the ANC the responsibility to use its outright majority to end poverty, unemployment and inequality.
It failed spectacularly. If anything, the triple challenges deepened under Ramaphosa’s administration. A less forgiving interpretation of the statement is that Ramaphosa is only too glad to have brought the ANC to its knees as having met part of the bargain entered with the funders of his presidential campaign.
Third, Ramaphosa must convince all and sundry that the so-called Government of National Unity, as constituted, is a workable proposition. It is not lost to anyone that the main partners of the GNU – the ANC and DA – are not aligned policy-wise.
Ramaphosa’s promise to prioritise the “empowerment of black South Africans and women, and all those who, in the past, had been relegated to the fringes of the economy” sounds hollow for those it is intended. The opposite has been their lot under his administration.
The same is true of the promise that his government “will continue to pursue programmes that encourage broad-based black economic empowerment, employment equity and support to small- and medium-sized enterprises”.
A case in point is that the lion’s share of Covid-19 relief schemes went to white-owned businesses. Addressing parliamentarians in 2020, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni reportedly noted.
“The government has provided R200-billion government-guaranteed loans. Of that R200 billion, banks have advanced R15 billion to SMMEs – 75% of the beneficiaries are white. Equally, the Business Partners have a scheme to support SMMEs, and of their scheme of R1-billion … 75% went to white-owned businesses.”
The failure will probably continue, especially with a GNU that comprises members who do not believe in policies such as broad-based BEE.
It is also not lost to anyone that political parties are in the business of increasing their political fortunes all the time. Ramaphosa is expected to explain how this would be reconciled with the notion of working together with a party whose political agenda is to see the ANC politically buried. Regarding this, Helen Zille, the federal chair of the DA, was unequivocal.
Fourth, having failed to deliver on almost all his promises, Ramaphosa’s words have come to count for nothing. Not only has he run out of more promises, but he has also lost credibility and believability. As expected of someone bereft of ideas, Ramaphosa’s Achilles heel is that he over-promises.
Fifth, with the opening of Parliament coinciding with the birthday of former president Nelson Mandela, it was inevitable that Ramaphosa would be expected to invoke the memory of Madiba. Reference to Madiba could not have been more unfortunate since this brings to light the sad situation in which the ANC finds itself.
The ANC under Madiba won elections and took 62% of the share of the vote. Under Ramaphosa, the ANC’s support at the polls plummeted to 40%. Ramaphosa’s attempt to style himself as a modern-day Madiba has failed dismally.
No matter how hard his sycophants try to portray him, Ramaphosa is no Madiba. Madiba was a man of substance. He was decisive. Importantly, Madiba was honest. Ramaphosa is demonstrably bereft of this attribute.
If anything, Ramaphosa has become an embodiment of Madiba’s warning that the ANC should guard against the emergence of an offensive that would seek to reverse the historic liberation Struggle.
Delivering his political report at the 1997 ANC conference, Madiba argued: “Even a cursory study of the positions adopted by the mainly white parties … will show that they and the media which represents the same social base, have been most vigorous in their opposition, whenever legislative and executive measures have been introduced, seeking the end of the racial disparities which continue to characterise our society.”
Unbeknown to him, Madiba was prophetic in his observation.
“The reason for this is that the defenders of apartheid privilege continue to sustain a conviction that an opportunity will emerge in the future, when they can activate this counter-insurgency machinery, to impose an agenda on South African society which would limit the possibilities of the democratic order to such an extent that it would not be able to create a society of equality, that would be rid of the legacy of apartheid.”
The GNU is, arguably, the nightmare Madiba warned us about.
* Professor Sipho Seepe is a higher education and strategy consultant
** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media