It was a presidential rebuke like no other. The timing of former president Thabo Mbeki’s public criticism of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s performance could not have been worse for the incumbent.
That the admonition came from former president Thabo Mbeki, who has publicly supported and campaigned for the election of Ramaphosa, is more damning. It sent a worrying message that even senior ANC leaders inclined to support Ramaphosa were now also concerned about the slow pace at which he’s tackling social issues plaguing the country.
This as Ramaphosa is trying desperately to hold onto his position, after the claims of foreign currency violations, kidnapping and torture at his Phala Phala farm in Limpopo.
Mbeki, speaking at ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte’s memorial service, accused Ramaphosa of inaction that could precipitate an Arab Spring uprising against the ANC government.
Mbeki said the government had no plan to tackle poverty, unemployment, criminality and inequality. He added that Ramaphosa failed to keep a promise to address these through a social compact he said would be in place 100 days after his February state of the nation address. “Nothing has happened (since the promise was made). Nothing,” he said.
Mbeki warned the nation not to forget what happened to unresponsive regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. “One of my fears is that one of these days it’s going to happen to us. You can’t have so many people unemployed, so many people poor, people faced with lawlessness, faced by leadership in which they see ANC people one after one another called corrupt. One day it’s going to explode,” Mbeki said.
That the warning came from Mbeki, who has not been hostile and has tried to help Ramaphosa, is damning for the president. Those who have previously criticised Ramaphosa could be fobbed off as self-interested enemies with an axe to grind. Not so for Mbeki.
Others have dismissed Mbeki’s criticism as being rich coming from him. The genesis of a number of crises in the country, they say, lay in his failure to provide leadership on issues we are still grappling with, such as Zimbabwe (read immigration), crime and HIV/Aids.
Mbeki doesn’t need to have been a perfect president, if there’s ever one, to offer counsel
His own faults notwithstanding, Mbeki’s performance in office should not invalidate the important issues he is raising.
Mbeki doesn’t need to have been a perfect president, if there’s ever one, to offer counsel. The issue is much less the source than the merit of the counsel.
It is plain, too, that undoing years of colonial, apartheid and ANC misrule will require a Herculean effort. Hopelessness, however, sets in when there’s not even public discourse on how to move the country forward. The issues about which Mbeki spoke ought to be not just top of mind in our country, but our constant preoccupation. He is correct to urge us not to adopt a business-as-usual approach when so many endure the ignominy of life without jobs and a want of basic necessities at a time when inflation and interest rates are pushing the cost of living beyond the reach of many.
The battle against poverty, unemployment and inequality appears to have been displaced from our agenda by our latest preoccupations, which include the Phala Phala affair, KwaZulu-Natal floods, last July’s riots and the global Covid-19 pandemic .
Mbeki’s rebuke is not only timely, it is necessary. Ramaphosa must act on his own promises. A good place to start is initiating the social compact he spoke about in his state of the nation address. A failure to address poverty, joblessness, inequality and rampant criminality will not only undermine the Ramaphosa administration, but it may also put at risk the gains achieved at the dawn of democracy in 1994.
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