Should Ramaphosa start his own party?
· Citizen
The ANC is stuck in the mud and has three options available to it: a long slog to eventually sink, a long slog leading to a longer slog in perpetuity or a long slog that may eventually reach solid ground. Whatever path, the long slog is inevitable.
The question it needs to ask itself is what would all that slog be for? Convincing an electorate that it is not the cause of the broken promises of 1994 after 32 years of trying? Convincing a country that it needs more time than others took to bounce back from world wars?
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The ANC’s future
However you cut it, whatever the ANC needs to do to regain the trust of the people will probably be rather self-indulgent. Unfortunately, it’s the excessive self-indulgence that has hardly earned the party many lovers beyond those who have been deployed to indulge.
But what will become of the party? Who’s setting up to lead it? Even if you forget about the early day legends of the ANC – Dube, Makgatho, Mahabane – newer leaders like Dr Xuma and Luthuli leave legacies the current crop can scarcely comprehend, let alone emulate.
And who will follow after Cyril ‘Cupcake’ Ramaphosa? Who is left of the intelligentsia within the organisation? The only name that comes to mind is Ronald Lamola and it’s not like there’s much groundswell around him.
This fight to regain the trust of the people, instil a sense of working for the people within the political class and overturn the problems the ANC catalysed, if not cultivated, seems moot.
As it is, the ANC is dealing with an inward factional battle that must be consuming the president’s time – RET forces vs CR17 sounds like a bad level in a worse video game and we only get the controller once every five years but are forced to watch every waking hour. And for what?
Empty promises?
A R1 trillion infrastructure overhaul? Goody gumdrops! I can’t wait for the patronage network to prove that they won’t get their gummy hands on it like he’s promised. Remember how we were promised that all that Covid relief money would be going to the right places? If I were to bet on which companies did remarkably well in the second and third quarter of 2020, I think BMW and Mercedes would be a safe place to put my money, as did many connected people back then.
Can Ramaphosa fix the ANC?
If Ramaphosa thinks he can turn the ANC around, that would be great but who would he do it for and what’s the likelihood that he’ll have a successor that won’t just turn it right back, if he’s successful at all?
Is the party that he leads too far gone to recover? Probably not but it’s going to take an awful lot of work to right the ship. In business we usually just let the ship sink and buy a new ship because it’s cheaper and more effective to do that instead of trying to plug all the holes while more are forming. There’s a reason that nobody goes into the ocean, pulling up crashed aircraft and panel beating them into working order again with a syringe and presstick.
If Ramaphosa has anything to offer the country in the long run, he may have a far better time making a go of it outside of the organisation that seemingly insists on holding him back.
It’s not an easy thing to have to imagine but after nearly a decade at the helm, what’s the greatest thing his leadership of the party has brought? At least Jacob Zuma organised us a sweet hosting of the world cup. Post 2017, the best thing we got was that eventually the ANC stopped bragging about it.