It is not often that a sitting head of state leads his political party to its worst electoral performance, its relatively strong majority evaporating into thin air, and yet not only gets to keep his post but appears to be in a far stronger position than he was before the elections.
When President Cyril Ramaphosa first assumed office in February 2018, the ANC controlled 62.15% of the seats in the National Assembly.
Though the party’s dominance in parliament was insurmountable, his own power and authority were viewed as constrained by the outcomes of the ANC’s national conference the previous year, which — while making him president — meant that he would have to accommodate those who were regarded as his opponents, in the form of the Jacob Zuma camp.
Hence many who had backed his bid for the ANC presidency, in the belief that his victory would mark a decisive break with ministers and other ANC leaders regarded as “enablers of state capture”, were disappointed to see many Zuma acolytes retained in Ramaphosa’s first cabinet.
This constraint, as well as Ramaphosa’s determination to prevent the governing party from suffering another debilitating split, would see him follow the same approach even after the 2019 elections, which returned him and the ANC to power with 57.5% of the vote.
Hence the popular perception of a weak Ramaphosa presidency that was averse to taking a firm stand on contentious issues — even if this indecisiveness jeopardised the country and the economy. It is a perception the president and his supporters reject, arguing that — despite some opposition from within party ranks — he did introduce fundamental policy reforms in electricity provision and distribution, the transport sector and in many other spheres.
But there is no denying that until he won his second term as ANC president at the party’s national conference in 2022, Ramaphosa’s authority within the party was often challenged by those in the ranks who suspected him of being too close to the white business establishment to the detriment, they argued, of the black majority.
The period between the 2022 conference and this year’s election saw him and his supporters take greater charge of Luthuli House — with their critics increasingly being pushed to the margins of the party. By the time we got to the polls, the so-called radical economic transformation gospel was seldom heard in the corridors of Luthuli House, let alone the government.
And then came May 29, when the Ramaphosa-led ANC’s share of the votes nosedived from 57.5% to just under 40%. Had this happened in 2019 when the ANC’s national executive committee was still split almost equally between Ramaphosa supporters and those who previously backed Zuma, it would have most certainly led to calls for the president’s recall.
But such is the president’s strength in the current NEC that none of its members dared bring up the dreaded “R” word that led to the fall of Thabo Mbeki in 2008 and Zuma in 2018.
The way in which Ramaphosa went about putting together his cabinet actually left the GNU resembling the successive ANC administrations that have run this country since 1994
Instead, Ramaphosa was allowed to lead an ANC rescue mission that, it seems now, may guarantee his stay in power until the end of his term — making him the first post-apartheid president to complete two full terms in office.
That, of course, assumes that the DA and the smaller parties in the government of national unity (GNU) are not going to change their minds about Ramaphosa being central to them agreeing to the current governance arrangement.
With the governing party scheduled to hold its national general council (NGC) next winter, Ramaphosa’s detractors will most likely see his decision to go into a coalition with the DA as a soft underbelly they can attack to launch their campaign for the 2027 ANC conference.
They would find it hard, however, to convince their comrades that a different route — whether forming a minority government or getting into bed with the EFF and Zuma’s MK Party — would have yielded much better results for the ANC than what it derives from the current arrangement.
While most of their comrades may share the irritation at having DA leaders in cabinet, they recognise that, for the ANC, this was the most stable route and that the way in which Ramaphosa went about putting together his cabinet actually left the GNU resembling the successive ANC administrations that have run this country since 1994.
As for the DA and other parties in the coalition government, the GNU is an important platform to showcase what they can do in government. They would want to stay in it as long as they can to build a strong track record ahead of both the 2026 local government elections and the 2029 general election.
Besides, it is in the interest of their funders — big business — that these parties help a weakened ANC keep a stable and market-friendly administration in office.
As a result, no matter what happens at the ANC national conference in 2027, Ramaphosa may be the first president since Nelson Mandela to leave office on his own terms.
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