In July I did a podcast with Songezo Zibi, a former editorial colleague and now leader of the Rise Mzansi party in parliament and a member of the governing coalition the GNU. When will we know, I asked him, whether the GNU is going to work? Seven months, he said. Then we’ll know.
That gives us until the end of February and plenty of opportunity for President Cyril Ramaphosa to show us his hand and his plans. Tomorrow he becomes chair of the influential G20 group of leading economies. There’ll be a speech. In January the ANC celebrates a birthday and he gets to make another long speech.
Then there are strings of “bosberaads” of the ANC first and then the cabinet and others, and then the opening of parliament and a vast state of the nation speech by the president and then his finance minister presents the budget for 2025. And then it’s the end of February.
What are the chances that at any time between now and then the president might say anything new? It’s all very well going on and on about how unfair global governance is, or that paying welfare to 28-million people isn’t sustainable.
We know. But what would happen if one day he said something unfamiliar? Would there be anyone around to cheer? If people don’t expect to hear anything they don’t already know, what is the point of them listening?
The sad truth is that while the electorate and the world are still enjoying the relative calm of the GNU and some positive gestures and statements of intent by ministers from both the ANC and the DA, the last words you will hear from the president are the details of a GNU plan of action.
It should be no surprise that there isn’t one. He can’t afford the detail in case it blows up in his face. He can’t say, “Look, we’re going to focus on and finish 10 huge projects in this administration, each designed to make the economy more productive. We’ll build a new fast rail link between Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay, concession the ports of Durban, Richards Bay, Coega and Cape Town to the private sector, build 30 new privately run rural boarding schools so poor children can be fed and taught properly and digitise the entire government.” If he ever did he would open himself up to defeat or, worse, failure and humiliation.
So he would probably rather not try. And that’s our problem. In a sea of poverty, lawlessness and cosmic unemployment, the guy in charge just daren’t step out and lead from the front. Instead he will make one bland speech after another and play out his “reforms” in the privacy of his own office where Operation Vulindlela is supposedly making tremendous progress on logistics, crime, water (soon) and anything else his ministers can’t cope with.
But there is really no way to measure what it is doing. Apart from electricity and Eskom fixing itself it’s hard to find an area of Ramaphosa “reform” that’s actually moving ahead and creating investment and jobs. There’s lots of talk, lots of plans.
Ramaphosa survives by making the smallest possible target of himself and the hundreds of thousands of dollars stuffed into his couches was a blunder
Ramaphosa survives by making the smallest possible target of himself and Phala Phala and the hundreds of thousands of dollars stuffed into his couches was a monumental blunder (and pretty tasteless).
But as he faces tough and organised (though utterly lunatic) challenges from Jacob Zuma, local government elections and then ANC elections from where he needs to control his succession ahead of the 2029 general election, he confronts the excruciating prospect of actually having to stand up and do something we can all measure him by.
For the moment he’s content to allow the markets to tell a positive story about South Africa while he quietly tweaks (or almost tweaks) policy and strategy where it doesn’t cause him political bother. Bloomberg just ran a story saying we were “becoming a favourite among investors seeking to navigate a world with Donald Trump as the US president”. That’s good, but those investors won’t create any jobs here.
They’re here for our healthy capital markets and the returns they make until US interest rates rise to combat the inflation Trump’s tariff and immigration policies will cause.
And then they’ll leave.
The alternative for Ramaphosa and the rest of us is an actual “to-do” list. Just 10 things we can all get behind that’ll make a difference.
The chances of him actually producing one, let alone announcing it in his many speeches, by the end of February are sadly close to zero. His ministers have their good ideas but there’s no obvious co-ordination happening. It’s typical Cyril. He can’t move without causing offence. I must remember to ask Songezo what happens next.
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