Ramaphosa in 'departure lounge' amid DA gaffe fury

Top ANC leaders came down hard on President Cyril Ramaphosa this week after his controversial endorsement of the DA, forcing him to embark on a public relations drive to do damage control.

Well-placed senior leaders told the Sunday Times Ramaphosa was forced to backtrack on his statement that the ANC should take a leaf out of the DA’s book over good governance. This, the said, explained his much-trumpeted hour-long live interview with the SABC.

Insiders say other ANC heavy hitters demanded that Ramaphosa clear up his own mess when other damage-control attempts by secretary-general Fikile Mbalula flopped.

Mbalula had dispatched NEC members on media tours in the hope of mitigating the damage, but when this undertaking failed, the ANC’s top brass demanded that Ramaphosa fix his blunder.

During the SABC interview, Ramaphosa's backtracking included his saying that the clean audits given to DA-run municipalities such as the City of Cape Town did not mean they had the best governance or better service delivery. A clean audit simply indicated the municipality had complied with relevant regulations.

“I know that many people in the DA got very excited and said, ‘Yeah, the president said this.’ From a compliance point of view, a number of [DA municipalities] meet the mark, but from a transformation point of view they are not really meeting the mark. And a number of ANC municipalities meet the mark,” he said.

“One of the other things I have found also with the Western Cape is that sometimes money is returned to the fiscus without [its] having been spent. So, all in all, all of us need to learn from each other. We need to learn when someone is doing [well]. We must find out why are they doing [well]. That is exactly what [Oliver] Tambo taught us.”

Luthuli House is said to have instructed its national executive committee deployees to say that former ANC president Oliver Tambo’s remarks during his speech at Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in 1984 were the basis for Ramaphosa’s statements. 

To quell the anger from its branches, Luthuli House said Tambo had encouraged the ANC to be prepared to learn from the enemy — a message Ramaphosa kept repeating in his interview with the public broadcaster.

The move has angered some top ANC men and women, including some of Ramaphosa’s loyalists, who are now hinting it is time for him to go.

ANC leaders said they had long suspected that Ramaphosa had quietly entered the  departure lounge for party leaders, and some intimated he may leave office as soon as the G20 summit ends in November. 

We are really growing tired of these old men — they must all just go

—  Anonymous younger ANC leader

His endorsement of the DA during an ANC councillors’ roll call has further fuelled this rumour, with some NEC members saying Ramaphosa should simply resign if he no longer has confidence in the ANC.

The ANC’s electoral support is expected to decline further in next year’s local government elections, according to pollsters.

Speaking at the roll call — attended by thousands of ANC councillors from across the country on Monday — Ramaphosa stunned those present when he said the DA ran the municipalities it controlled better, and that ANC deployees should follow the example set by their biggest electoral opponent.

“There is nothing wrong with us saying we want to go and see what Cape Town is doing, we want to go and see what Stellenbosch is doing — how they craft everything. We need to be moving up the ladder or being good at what we do. We cannot forever stay at the bottom. It hurts me deeply when I continue to see that our municipalities tend to move even backwards, and you are the people who can improve that,” he told the more than 4,000 ANC councillors in attendance.

Ramaphosa further angered ANC ministers when he doubled down on his remarks during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

According to insiders, Ramaphosa repeated his statements during a cabinet meeting — to the glee of DA ministers present. 

An ANC minister who spoke to the Sunday Times said they felt humiliated when Ramaphosa told his executive the reports of the auditor-general were scientific proof that the DA was performing better than the ANC. 

“You ask yourself why he [would] want to be the president of a party he does not believe in. If he thinks the DA is outperforming the ANC, maybe he should step down. It’s a political blunder we may not be able to survive,” the minister said. 

A DA leader said Ramaphosa had “pretty much handed us a slam-dunk campaign slogan”, saying the party would use Ramaphosa’s statements during its voting drive.

“We have the endorsement of the ANC president — what more could we ask for? All we need to say to voters is that Ramaphosa has told you that where the DA governs, it governs better. That will be enough. That clip should be used on all our campaigns. He has handed us the elections and, no matter what the ANC does, the genie can never be put back [into the bottle],” the leader said. 

Younger ANC leaders said they were growing increasingly tired of the blunders made by their elderly leaders.

“We are really growing tired of these old men — they must all just go. Paul [Mashatile, ANC deputy president] must also just get his one term and leave, because if he also stays for more than one term, we are likely going to see the same thing.

“We must really revisit this retirement age thing and have it cover even us in politics. 

“Now we can see that [a] retirement age [in politics] is valid. [If we had one], then at least by 70 or 71 politicians would be preparing for their exit. Otherwise, you have all these things [happening].”

Others said pushing for Ramaphosa to leave earlier than the 2027 elective conference would enable Mashatile to take over immediately — something they do not support.

“They want him gone, but they can’t say it, because it pulls in Paul quicker than they would like, and that is the problem here. They do want him to go, but they have this problem that Ramaphosa leaving means Paul immediately gets in, and they don’t want that.”