As a speaker, former president Thabo Mbeki can be a bit worthy and boring, but he was clear as a bell on Thursday when he stood up at the Jesse Duarte memorial service in Johannesburg and tore into President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa, Mbeki was basically saying, is an empty vessel.
The president had failed, he said, to deal with unemployment, poverty and inequality, the trifecta the ANC routinely uses to describe its mission. “There is no national plan to deal with these challenges,” said Mbeki, ignoring the fact that there are plans to deal with them but they gather dust in the presidency. “It doesn’t exist.” He was being deliberately nasty.
“Comrade Cyril Ramaphosa” — he coughed as he spoke the name — “when he delivered his state of the nation address in February ... said in 100 days there must be an agreed social compact to address these matters. Nothing has happened. Nothing.”
I have to admit there was a time earlier this year when I thought Ramaphosa and Mbeki had begun to try to heal their long-standing rift. Both men started the year talking about the need for social compacting. But while Ramaphosa has abandoned the 100-day target he set himself, Mbeki hasn’t. It may matter in December when Ramaphosa seeks re-election as ANC leader.
Two months ago, a Ramaphosa victory was assured. The old Zuma threats — Ace Magashule and others — had been neutralised. But the national mood has been soured by a prolonged period of blackouts; a promise to announce “in days” an emergency electricity build that never came; interest rate increases; policy failures from mining to foot-and-mouth disease (neglecting to dip cattle); and continued physical insecurity.
Ramaphosa’s road to victory is becoming steeper, and the still unexplained theft of what might be up to $4m in cash from his Limpopo game farm doesn’t help. The master of ceremonies at the memorial service for Duarte, the ANC’s vulpine treasurer-general Paul Mashatile, sat next to Mbeki as he spoke and applauded all the Ramaphosa insults. Mashatile is not without political ambition and he is business-friendly.
And Mbeki will have known exactly what he was doing. He is going to lend his weight to an effort to stop Ramaphosa’s re-election either now or in 2024.
It is a long shot but Mbeki has nothing to lose. Ramaphosa has palpably failed to unite the party and failed to create the jobs he keeps promising. He sort of fixed the revenue service and the prosecution service but he messed up the police, the railways, the airline, the ports, the roads, the towns, oil refining and electricity.
Watch out for former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas. He’s been setting out a political stall for more than three years now
Life for the poor under him is arguably worse than it was under Jacob Zuma, if that were possible, and our finances are only very slowly on the mend.
Ramaphosa doesn’t stand on very solid ground and even if he survives Phala Phala — which I assume he will — he may be vulnerable to a challenge that doesn’t involve Lindiwe Sisulu, Zweli Mkhize or any other Zuma/radical economic transformation candidate. It would probably not come directly from Mbeki either.
But watch out for former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas. He’s been setting out a political stall for more than three years now.
An authentic witness to Zuma/Gupta corruption, his 2019 book, After Dawn: Hope After State Capture, is a political manifesto. His article on this page on July 3 is clear: “SA’s crisis is deep,” he wrote. “Our big challenge today is to come up with a game plan that offers hope and options for a reimagined future … Standing up to save our country is no longer an option; it is a necessity. The new political moment has come.”
But come for whom? For Ramaphosa or for the rest of us? If he isn’t talking to the president in what I’ve just quoted, then he is surely challenging him. So why not just come out now and say it?
I know this is hard. And risky. The ANC might be an ethical and operational catastrophe but it is still a formidable political machine. You do not just step up five months before an internal leadership election and hope to win it.
So let’s assume the Jonas game is a little longer. The next general election is, by now, no more than two years away. Does the former deputy finance minister leave the ANC and stand against it? As an independent? Or does he reach out to Songezo Zibi, who has also, literally, just written his Manifesto, and do what we should all be doing in this moment of change — standing up and saving our country from the ANC.
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