Sunday Times (ST): Does South Africa need a woman leader right now, or a leader who will restore its morale, rouse the nation and economy back to its feet?
Cyril Ramaphosa (CR): It should not make a difference. The country needs leaders, not even one leader but leaders, men and women, who will be sensitive and competent to deliver to the needs of our people. That is key. South Africa does not need a woman president right now. It needs a capable, uncaptured leader to restore the hope and work with the entire nation to restore the spirit and commitment and obligation the party has not for the African National Congress but the nation.
ST: What are your thoughts on the vicissitudes of state capture?
CR: Our country is unravelling. We cannot stand by and watch as the country sinks. The e-mails are there. This cannot be kept in the dark anymore. We cannot allow anyone, party leaders or foreigners, to come here and loot this country. We worked hard for this freedom currently under siege.
ST: You have been vocal on a judicial commission of inquiry on state capture.
CR:I have total confidence in our justice system. I have confidence in the NPA, ditto the commission process. I cannot be cynical about it. The commission should happen, and perform its mandate with utmost urgency. It should be results oriented and those found to have stolen from the country should face the full might of the law.
ST: The president is himself implicated in a specific case ... allegedly enabling the Gupta family to capture the government.
CR: That's what one hopes the investigation will get to the bottom of; that is within the broader mandate it gets given.
ST: So we are asking him to constitute a transparent commission to investigate, among others, himself?
CR: The president is constitutionally obliged to institute that inquiry. He has said it on record that he sees nothing wrong in instituting it. He should also be aware the world is looking closely at this. It's a process that cannot be abused by anyone; if it is, people would pick that up immediately.
ST: Have you had that conversation with him?
CR: Yes, I told him: "Man, you have to do it right!" We trust he will. We have to give him the benefit of the doubt.
ST: What is it about this country that renders it low-hanging fruit for such brazen and naked abuse?
CR: For now all we have are damning allegations. But the phenomenon of state capturing is not unique to South Africa. What makes it unpalatable is that the country led by the ANC is still in the process of redressing decades of apartheid injustice. And then we have foreigners here involved in this sort of thing. We cannot be party to that.
ST: Has the ANC lost its historical revolutionary vision?
CR: The party and this country still have people who are saying: "Enough is enough." People are saying: "This is not us; we don't want to be defined as captured people." Our media is robust, the people are questioning. They cannot be taken for fools.
ST: What is your understanding of radical economic transformation?
CR: Our economy is skewed to benefit a small minority. There is no doubt that we need to transform it quite radically.
Even the deputy MD of the IMF, David Lipton, came here last year and said: "Look here, fellas, your economy is highly concentrated in the hands of a few players, you've got to deconcentrate." He meant a situation like that impedes competition, creates high prices of everything.
The cost of living in our country is extremely high, and that is [caused] by a lack of competition. Take a look at retail and the financial and banking sector. Only four banks dominate, and the cost of banking is extremely high simply because there's no competition. That squeezes the air out of these sectors and benefits only them.
South Africa does not
— Cyril Ramaphosa
need a woman
president right now.
It needs a capable,
uncaptured leader.
ST: Given a chance to lead it, what would your plans for the economy be?
CR: It's more about the ANC's economic policies. Everybody agrees we have the most fantastic economic policies. But what is lacking is implementation. What we need to do is to make sure that we harness all the resources, human and material, with a view to giving our people better lives. In the National Development Plan (NDP) we clearly have a defined real policy framework that is a lodestar to lead us forward.
ST: And here I was thinking the NDP has long been a dead duck.
CR: The NDP is the clearest policy framework for improving the lives of our people. What [people] complain about is implementation. All we need to do is to give our plans wings and legs.
ST: How do we do that?
CR: We need to make sure that the country's resources are not wasted, stolen, defrauded, and are properly utilised and harnessed. For me four things are key to altering our people's lives:
- What has always been requisite is a clearly defined policy position, and in the NDP we already have that;
- Deploy your resources properly;
- Have the right people who are focused on doing the work, and populate key levers of economic activity and social activities meant to improve our people's lives; and
- We need to have ongoing evaluations, ask ourselves: are we making headway here?
ST: But what would you do to make this reality?
CR: I'd take guidance from the ANC economic plans and push hard for implementation. The ANC has really radical economic policies. All we need is implementation with checks and balances.
It is clear - the economy needs to be overhauled systematically. We are sitting on 30% unemployment rates. That's unsustainable. I'm saying doing away with the monopolies is instructive here.
The Americans did it during Franklin D Roosevelt's time. They deconcentrated the financial sector, and used the antitrust laws to break up monopolies in the oil sector. That resulted in an intensely productive and competitive oil sector ...
ST: But what are you waiting for? With due respect, you speak as though the governing party is helpless.
CR: No, it's hamstrung by several things including own party issues, focusing too much on unproductive things and not enough on mechanisms and legislation, and other means to accelerate redress.
ST: I'm worried about the tone of institutional or political helplessness ...
CR: That resonates. It cannot be allowed to continue. We were given the mandate to lead and not to blame. Analysing structural imbalances correctly with a view of redress is not the same as helpless blame.
You have to identify the leaking holes first.
ST: Establishment figures and leaders subvert revolutionary impetus by adopting the language of "the people". It's an old shtick: co-opt the rhetoric to bat away criticism. It's ironic to hear you sound like the EFF.
CR: In my past business life, community and national political space, I have been a proponent of radical transformation. I am a doer and not a sloganeer.
ST: And yet you have not been immune to the accusation that you are a tool of white monopoly capital?
CR: Part of me wishes to ignore the slur with the contempt it deserves, because the strategy is to ensnare you into the mud and exhaust you with these sort of insults. So that you lose focus and gets sidetracked. It's sick. Ignoring it wholly is not helpful, either.
ST: There is a real social and economic concern, perhaps similar to that raised by students regarding the resistance of academia to transformation - lots of black enterprises and professionals speak bitterly about culturally rooted resistance to transformation.
CR: Look, the students are right, and black business concerns are correct. There is that resistance to accelerated change.
It's a point we keep coming back to, because it is frustrating. It also seems as if we are trapped in this, a cycle of blaming on our part, and a response with keeping the historical status quo. Things can't remain that way. What's the use of our great policies in the ANC if we can't address these things?
On the matter of Marikana
ST: Marikana is, for a cruder expression, the monkey on your back. Some people dismissed your apology as political opportunism. What do you feel you still have to do about that chapter?
CR: There's just no limit to that apology. What happened is indescribable. It was terrible. It will remain a black dot in our narrative.
I take full responsibility of my role in it, and once again, my role was as follows. I was disturbed upon hearing the news that 10 miners, 10 innocent miners, had been killed. My reaction was: this cannot be activism. This is a criminal act. Back then I felt that the situation should be dealt with by the law. It was inappropriate language. I cannot try to be smart about it.
ST: Talk me through your apology.
CR: Although I had apologised before and took full responsibility, two major guides I have much respect and love for approached me. It was Mama Winnie Mandela and, separately, the National Union of Mineworkers who came to me and said: "Hey, Ndoda, you have to address this with the nation." And I immediately said: "Yes, Mama."
I had already heard the NUM out and agreed with them. So the stars aligned, the heart still sank deeper knowing human life, for whatever reason and under whatever circumstances it was taken, cannot be brought back.
I'm still apologetic even now.
I also believe there are several people, including me and entities that, in the process of initiating healing and hearing out families still traumatised, have started individual means of moving ahead, mostly subject to the families' subjective response to this. If it was bad for me, imagine how terrible it is for them.
ST: You must be ruing the day you wrote the e-mails, one of them urging the minister of police to take "concomitant" action. What did you mean by that?
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— what do you think?
CR: I meant that we are losing grip of law and order in the area. Since 10 people were already killed, I feared for a worse bloodbath. It was an interventionist impulse.
Some people say I was protecting Shanduka's investment in Lonmin. Of course that's being nasty and creative with the facts.
Truth be said, we lost money, R300-million of what was invested was subsequently underwritten. We are not complaining. Money cannot be equal to, nor be a substitute to, human or any other life. But it cannot be said that we were protecting profits; what profits?
