After six years, the time has come for South Africans to put aside the hatred or positive feelings they have towards President Cyril Ramaphosa and conduct an honest assessment of his term as head of state — one that is based on facts and not vibes.
In the wake of the political earthquake that shook the country this week, the history books will also show that he had the worst political record of any president during the first three decades of democracy since 1994. Time will tell if he will also be seen as the president who put the nail in the coffin of what was once one of Africa’s great liberation movements.
It also remains to be seen whether Ramaphosa will resign, as would happen in many other countries, or if the ANC will recall him and start a political brawl over his successor. Will Ramaphosa recover from his weakest moment ever and have the fight in him to put together a coalition that will probably result in another split in the ANC and accelerate the decline of the organisation?
It has twice cannibalised itself after shedding members of its youth league who formed the EFF in 2013 — and has now lost the supporters of Jacob Zuma, who started the MK Party five months ago and has now staged the most spectacular political comeback in South Africa since 1994.
Whichever way one slices the data, South Africa’s economy has performed dismally under ANC rule. It was a story of two halves — or 15-year periods — with GDP growth of 3.6% a year from 1994 to 2008, followed by a collapse to 1.2% a year from 2009 to 2023.
Ramaphosa was supposed to revive the economy after “nine wasted years” and state capture under Zuma. Ramaphosa's personal popularity was expected to improve the ANC’s electoral performance — the ANC’s support had declined by 3.7 percentage points to 62.2% in 2014 from 65.9% in 2009. But despite numerous gimmicks — from the “New Dawn” to the “Thuma Mina” speech during his first state of the nation address in February 2018 — the economy went from bad to worse. The situation at Eskom and Transnet deteriorated sharply after the “end of state capture” and the ANC’s electoral performance collapsed.
If one looks at economic performance by political administrations, there was average GDP growth of 2.7% a year under Nelson Mandela (1994-1999), 4% a year under Thabo Mbeki (1999-2008), 1.9% a year under Zuma (2009-2017) and 0.5% a year under Ramaphosa (2018-2023). By comparison, according to the International Monetary Fund, 155 emerging and developing economies grew 3.7% a year between 2018 and 2023. And 30 countries in emerging and developing Asia grew 4.8% a year.
Ramaphosa blames the Covid pandemic for his shocking economic record. But the economy was collapsing before the pandemic and the recovery has been one of the slowest in the world.
If one excludes two years of lockdowns, there was GDP growth of 1.1% a year between 2018 and 2023. By comparison, emerging and developing economies grew 4.2% a year, and emerging and developing Asia grew 5.4% a year. The IMF has forecast that South Africa’s economy will grow an average of 1.2% a year during 2024 and 2025. Emerging and developing economies will grow 4.2% a year while emerging and developing Asia will grow 5% a year during the same period. South Africans should never accept such a shocking performance, especially since Ramaphosa still does not have a plan to grow the economy six years after promising to develop a social compact to develop one.
The ANC got what it deserved for the gaslighting the people and the lies it told about the economy during the election campaign, which insulted the intelligence of South Africans
If one looks at power blackouts, it becomes clear that the collapse of Eskom’s plants started in 2018, not 2007, when he appointed a new board to clean up the effects of state capture. (“We appointed that board,” a business leader once told me.)
But an analysis of Council for Scientific & Industrial Research statistics shows that 95% of the energy shed since 2007 happened during the Ramaphosa presidency between 2018 and 2023 compared with 3.4% under Zuma. An analysis of Eskom’s technical and operational indicators in its 2018 annual report shows that its plants were performing well. Arguments that they had been run too hard or not adequately maintained are propaganda.
Also the huge decline of Transnet’s financial and operational performance started after 2018.
In March 2018, Ramaphosa launched the Youth Employment Service (YES), which he said would create 1-million internships in three years. This was the first of many gimmicks to address the youth unemployment crisis. Six years later, YES has been a flop and created only 145,000 work opportunities, of which about half are full-time jobs. From the fourth quarter of 2017 — just before he became president — to the first quarter of 2024, 239,000 young people (aged 15 to 34) lost their jobs. The number of unemployed young people increased by 1.2-million to 7-million.
Since he became president, the number of unemployed people of all ages has soared by 2.9-million to 12.1-million and the unemployment rate increased to 41.9% from 36.3%. The unemployment crisis is a national disgrace, and South Africans should never normalise it. The world unemployment rate was 5.1% in 2023, according to the International Labour Organisation and many countries have achieved full employment, defined as an unemployment rate of less than 5%. Six years later, Ramaphosa still does not have a plan to confront the unemployment crisis. South Africans should never accept any leader who does not provide a credible path towards achieving full employment.
Ramaphosa was presented as a business-friendly leader who was comfortable and popular with white people and would attract investment. In September 2018, he announced a R400bn infrastructure fund and used every opportunity since then to talk about increasing public investment. He hosted five investment summits where pledges worth R1.5-trillion were allegedly made. But if one cuts through the smoke and mirrors, the Treasury cancelled the infrastructure fund, which does not have a cent — and a public sector investment strike is the main reason for the decline of total investment. Since Ramaphosa became president, public investment has declined 22.5% and total investment 8.9%.
South Africans know that the “six wasted years” under Ramaphosa were worse than the “nine wasted years” under Zuma and that is why they showed the ANC and its “popular” leader the finger. The ANC got what it deserved for the gaslighting the people and the lies it told about the economy during the election campaign, which insulted the intelligence of South Africans.
In this election, the ANC’s share of the vote collapsed by 22.1 percentage points to 40.1% from 62.2% in 2014 under Zuma as the number of people who voted for the party plunged by 5.1-million. Since 2019, the ANC’s share of the votes has declined by 14.4 percentage points as 3.7-million people deserted the party.
If the economy and the ANC are worse off than they were six years ago, why should Ramaphosa stay?
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