I’m mildly amused when I see newspapers and editors complaining about how scarce President Cyril Ramaphosa is to the media. When I was editor of Business Day I asked regularly for an interview and got brushed off every time. By the time I last saw him in person, just more than 10 years ago at a memorial service for Graham Mackay, the former SABMiller CEO and chair, I had given up.
It was a large affair but Ramaphosa spotted me across the room and, to my surprise, came barrelling over, big smile. “Wow,” he said, “who is that?” I knew what he was talking about. A colleague on the Financial Mail, Songezo Zibi, had written his first op-ed lead for Business Day that morning.
Even today the piece is very good. “South Africa needs a lean, focused economic team staffed by ministers and bureaucrats who have deep insights into the workings of both business and labour,” he wrote. “Putting two communists [Rob Davis and Ebrahim Patel] at the head of trade & industry and economic development is hardly the way to get what stimulates business activity done.”
It appeared on January 17 2014 and it was the day Ramaphosa fell in love with Zibi. He became editor of Business Day and then last year, as founder of the small Rise Mzansi party, an MP and chair of parliament’s standing committee on public accounts.
I remembered the piece while watching Zibi tear into the DA on Thursday morning after finance minister Enoch Godongwana had withdrawn his 0.5 percentage point VAT increase. Rise Mzansi had joined other smaller parties and the ANC in passing a fiscal framework that enabled the tax rise — but, they insist, they then persuaded the ANC to drop it.
The DA, Zibi charged, had tried to “extort” the finance minister with demands about services in the Western Cape as the price of its support for a VAT increase. Rise Mzansi and the other parties had merely been protecting him.
I’m not convinced. The DA took its case against the VAT increase to court and was (and still is) on the verge of winning and forcing its withdrawal. In fact, for Godongwana to be able to withdraw VAT increases by May 1, he may need the courts to order it. Parliament may not have the time.
The second thing was that in his attack on the DA, Zibi wasn’t defending the ANC. He was defending the National Treasury, of which Godongwana has weakened
On the whole, it’s obvious the DA forced the minister’s hand when it became clear he was going to lose in court. Rise Mzansi and the smaller parties had given him the political cover to do it and now we wait to find out if the DA, having opposed the budget, will stay in the government of national unity.
My somewhat vacillating view is that the DA would be better served by leaving. It cannot go into local and then national elections and hope to grow its vote while hobbled by a relationship with a corrupt and indolent ANC that simply has no interest in growing the economy, nor any clue how to.
I’ll write more about that but, to an extent, Zibi is right to argue extortion. The DA was caught unprepared by the 2024 election result and had made no serious preparations for a coalition. What it did in the VAT fight was to try to improve its own coalition terms, as well as introduce broader and more sensible economic proposals.
The ANC on the other hand seemed well aware of what was about to befall it. Ramaphosa rammed through a wave of legislation before the elections. It’s as if he knew he wouldn’t have a majority for it later. Who would have thought the ANC could out-think the DA like that?
Now he is stuck with a wounded finance minister. Godongwana may not think he is compromised by two failed budget attempts in a row but even in a government stuffed with thieves and fraudsters he has become an embarrassment and must surely consider resigning.
Watching Zibi on Thursday with the ANC and 10 other parties two things struck me. The first was how foolish the DA was to pick on him and his small party last year. He got under the DA’s skin and it became obsessed with him. But in an African country where the national leadership will be African for a century, to go out of your way to alienate an African leader as business-friendly and smart as Zibi is madness.
The second thing was that in his attack on the DA, Zibi wasn’t defending the ANC. He was defending the National Treasury, which Godongwana has weakened. Treasury and the Reserve Bank are vital and delicate institutions, not to be casually bullied.
I think Zibi may well be Ramaphosa’s next finance minister.
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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