Hope Fusing With Compound Shadows of the Past

The lesson from the presidency of Cyril Ramaphosa was that hope for new beginnings depended on the intensity and persistence of shadows of the past and the incumbent’s skill to keep alive people’s trust that the presidency embodied hope. Ramaphosa’s presidency brought in many of the antitheses to the dispensation of his predecessor, Jacob Zuma. Yet, the experiences of the Zuma years, anchored in the ANC’s pre-Zuma times, haunted Ramaphosa. Zuma had left the presidential positions, but in legacy and institutional culture the disruptive bequests lingered, and Ramaphosa’s presidency carried the burden.

A frequently weak and malfunctioning state apparatus and a notorious inability to give effect to well-meaning policies further muddled Ramaphosa’s presidency. When Covid-19 struck, the Ramaphosa presidency shone briefly. As the nation reeled, Ramaphosa was seen to lead, but then critical consciousness returned when the ravages of lockdown were manifested and the Ramaphosa team misstepped. The crisis laid bare a presidency that struggled to assert leadership from the front, a porous presidency steeped in consultative approaches. The advice to the president was haphazard – and he was unable to assert the compassionate but determined leadership that was demanded. He let the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC) displace the constitutionally mandated, accountable institutions of top government, until resurgent legal action brought reconsideration. His weakness in Cabinet resulted in ministers contradicting him, promulgating Covid regulations and security force practices that detracted from his credibility. Ramaphosa tried to rein in corruption in the scramble for anti-Covid tenders by issuing stern letters to his ANC comrades and working to sway the NEC into acting unambiguously and persuasively against all public sector perpetrators of corruption, but the clamber for tenders epitomised ANC avarice in government and the greed contrasted with destitution on the ground. Such inconsistencies dealt a severe blow to the Ramaphosa presidency.

Ramaphosa became the custodian of the introduction of the district development model of government – in typical ANC governance fashion bringing in supplementary institutions when formal-constitutional ones failed, such as in the case of local government. It acknowledged the inability of top government, and the presidency, to control rogue local governments, coastline to coastline, that could not manage public resources.