A police station was this week burgled and guns were stolen at gunpoint in Mpumalanga, eight months after another was burgled in Limpopo. In Ga-Rankuwa, the Sunday Times revealed recently that the rickety police station, without the bare necessities, shuts down at night because the officers fear the local gangs.
But then, no less an authority than the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was robbed of huge sums of dollars, safely stowed away in his mattresses and couches, because the banks too could be robbed, no? Well, instead of getting proper officers to investigate, the president asked a farmer. Someone must tell the people of Ga-Rankuwa they need farmers in their areas and not a functional police station — if we are learning anything from our president.
And then there was, this week, the onset of water-shedding in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Yes, we can’t just have power outages and no corresponding water- shedding, right? Our tragedies don’t come in ones! When we talk about unemployment, there must be inequality and related horrors. And so when we talk about power outages, we now have water-shedding too. Our directionlessness, to use former president Thabo Mbeki’s parlance, is in full swing. Auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke can speak at the top of her voice about wastage. The president is most probably at an auction, worrying about the whereabouts of his helper and her Namibian connections rather than matters of state.
As Steve Biko told us, we are on our own. Life goes on. Where it improves, we will engage in debates about whether the iota of progress is because of government or in spite of it. We are, right now, in it. And the ANC is as directionless as the government whose head speaks with forked tongues about the robbery at Phala Phala farm in Limpopo, possible foreign exchange violations and, thus, making obvious the elephant in the room: who must succeed Ramaphosa?
One of the reasons former president Jacob Zuma did not get his way about who was to succeed him is because his then deputy, Ramaphosa, stiffened his chin, put his hand up and just over half of the party agreed that he had the right credentials to lead.
Yes, of course, this was after the candidate and his managers doled out wads of cash in what later became known as the CR17 bank statements. He appeared the exact opposite of the guy he sought to replace and, in some quarters, his candidacy was more of a relief — a thank God-type moment — than anything else.
Now that we know he is not much different to the guy he replaced, the question about his replacement has become urgent. He has a deputy, David Mabuza, but the nation has long moved on from whether the deputy is a potential replacement. The question would not arise if Mabuza was what a deputy needed to be.
It’s slim-picking season within the ANC, sadly. If we accept, as we must, that Mabuza is out, who then? The ANC’s suspended secretary-general Ace Magashule would, in different circumstances, have been one of the people to pronounce with credibility what should happen next. But, like Mabuza, there’s consensus he’s toast too.
ANC national treasurer Paul Mashatile, who is also acting secretary-general, is one option — but the perception of him as part of the so-called Alex Mafia creates a cloud about whether he could be trusted, quite apart from the fact that he is yet to demonstrate that his support transcends Gauteng. Former health minister Zweli Mkhize, who also served as the ANC's treasurer, was too much of an embarrassment with his shenanigans as health minister precipitating his premature exit from the cabinet. Reports that his arrest in relation to the Digital Vibes scandal is imminent keep him completely off the radar.
Can you readily think of anyone else? ANC leaders who would likely have mass appeal don’t have the right number of branches to support them within the party.
In a normal democracy, Ronald Lamola, the justice minister, would easily be put forward as a potential emergency replacement. He is young, intelligent, energetic and affable. But then he needs Ramaphosa’s branches to become a deputy president. Mmamoloko Kubayi too has potential but no discernible numbers to take a stand against Ramaphosa and win. Gauteng premier David Makhura has run the economic engine of the country and did not do badly. Gauteng is tricky because this is where all the “clever blacks”, to use a Zuma phrase, live. But Makhura doesn’t appear to have the wherewithal to stand against Ramaphosa.
ANC leaders who would likely have mass appeal don’t have the right number of branches to support them within the party
In short, those with the credibility to remove Ramaphosa don’t enjoy sufficient party support. Those with a smidgen of party support don’t have the credibility to save the ANC in 2024. If the ANC sticks with Ramaphosa as its face of the 2024 elections, it signs its death knell. It’s time for real chest pains.
EFF leader Julius Malema understands the above. He has called it “sharpening the contradictions”. His strategy appears, at least publicly, to be to push the party to make a hasty and hopefully bad strategic choice. In the end, though, Malema is right that Ramaphosa’s image is too dented for him to remain at the helm.
While his motivation may be naked party interest, it’s not unaligned with what the country needs. Ramaphosa will seek to show in the next weeks that former spy boss Arthur Fraser’s information is inaccurate and should not be relied on to remove him. The reason it needs to be investigated is precisely because no-one said it’s the gospel truth.
In any case, it will be shocking if we establish that Fraser, after years at the helm of the country’s spy agency, did not embellish the truth a little bit to push Ramaphosa over the edge. It’s what spies do. They add spice to the truth. But the fact that there’s some grain of truth in what they say, like keeping undeclared cash, off-the-book investigations, potential torture and bribery — paying thieves not to say they stole and got caught, turning on its head the phrase crime does not pay — is hugely embarrassing for a country in the grip of directionlessness, a country on autopilot.
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