Hartley Ramaphosa

Path to Power
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-86842-917-2
Verlag: Jonathan Ball
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 248 Seiten

In Ramaphosa: Path to Power veteran journalist Ray Hartley reveals how Cyril Ramaphosa pulled off one of the greatest political comebacks of modern times, and what lies in store for the new president as he embarks on a hefty clean-up operation of a country in shambles. Ray Hartley's bestselling 2017 biography, Ramaphosa: The Man Who Would Be King, offered a cogent analysis of how the former nearly-man of South African politics handled the key challenges he faced in the unions, in business and in politics. In this updated edition, Hartley questions whether the former 'man in the middle' can lead from the front, now that he has publicly denounced the besmirched Zuma and his corrupted ANC and established himself as a worthy recipient of the country's top job. So begins a new era in South African politics. As he takes the helm in 2018, Ramaphosa faces his biggest challenge yet: fixing a broken economy, weeding out Zuma's corrupt cronies in government and, finally, delivering on his promise of a better life for the poor majority. This fully revised edition also includes a new introduction and an additional chapter that covers the most recent developments in Ramaphosa's career and in South African politics.

RAY HARTLEY worked as an administrator at the CODESA negotiations, which ended apartheid. He has covered the unfolding drama of the new South Africa as a political correspondent, travelling extensively with Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. Hartley was the founding editor of The Times, and editor of South Africa's largest newspaper, The Sunday Times, from 2010 to 2013. He is author of Ragged Glory: The Rainbow Nation in Black and White and editor of the essay collection How to Fix South Africa.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hartley, Ray

Leseproben

Introduction
Suddenly, Ramaphosa was grinning. But just as quickly the smile disappeared and he was touching my sleeve conspira­torially: ‘I am an enigma, you know.’ – Anthony Butler Cyril Ramaphosa raised his right hand and took the oath of office as president of South Africa on 15 February 2018, two months after he narrowly won office as president of the ruling ANC. To most South Africans, Ramaphosa represented an opportunity to reverse the nation’s slide under Jacob Zuma. He pledged himself to a restoration of clean governance, a return to the rule of law and a faster pace of economic growth that would finally address the country’s youth unemployment disaster. Ramaphosa had taken power, but he remained an enigma. His first Cabinet was both a sweeping change and more of the same. He removed a swathe of Zuma’s lackeys and took firm control of the financial heart of government but inexplicably retained other Zuma loyalists, even some who were universally regarded as incompetent. He retained the weak and impotent head of public prosecutions who had protected Zuma until the eleventh hour, but he acted decisively against the tax boss associated with Zuma. The questions were many. What did Ramaphosa stand for? What motivated him? How would he govern? What were his real priorities? It is not my objective to provide a comprehensive account of Ramaphosa’s life. This has, in any event, been done by Anthony Butler in his admirable biography, Cyril Ramaphosa. Nor do I make any claim to illuminating the deep psychological motives that may or may not shape Ramaphosa’s public persona, or that of others in the political limelight, intriguing though such a work might be. Instead, I plan to stick to my knitting – the cut and thrust of politics, the great game that shapes the fortunes and destinies of nations. This is what interests me, and this is the craft that I have spent my working life refining as a journalist observing the unfolding of the great South African political spectacle. From the dying kicks of apartheid to the birth of the new democratic order and the emergence of new maladies, many of which were not anticipated, South Africa’s political story has been compelling. So much is at stake. It was once a simpler story, in which the demons of apartheid fought to the death with the angels of the anti-apartheid struggle. But it has evolved into something far more complex and difficult, although the old pattern persists of seeing its players as either demons or angels. In the amusing preface to his biography, Butler recounts the game of cat-and-mouse he played to get Ramaphosa’s coope­ration during a meeting at his Sandton offices: ‘Suddenly Ramaphosa was grinning. But just as quickly the smile disappeared and he was touching my sleeve conspiratorially: “I am an enigma, you know.”’1 I first encountered Ramaphosa when I served as the minutes secretary of Working Group Two in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) negotiations over the shape of a post-apartheid South Africa. Ramaphosa served on that committee, and it is no exaggeration to say that the sheer force of his personality and his tactical nous drove those negotiations to their successful conclusion. If there is one thing that has defined Ramaphosa’s political life, it is the description ‘negotiator’. Success in negotiations requires charm and charisma, but it also requires a ruthless eye for the opponent’s weaknesses and an ability to strike a deal at a moment when you have reduced those sitting across the table to a state where they will accept the compromise that you offer on your terms. Ramaphosa would become the lead negotiator for the African National Congress (ANC), the country’s largest and most influential liberation movement, at talks over the end of apartheid and the writing of a new constitution. He would demonstrate his negotiating prowess by cowing the ANC’s main opponent, the National Party (NP), which had ruled the country for over 40 years, into agreeing to free, unqualified elections for a fully democratic state that would be governed by a progressive constitution. This was not the accomplishment of an accommodator so much as the product of Ramaphosa’s negotiating prowess. He got the turkeys to vote for Christmas. But once the ink had dried on the Interim Constitution and Nelson Mandela was set to become South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Ramaphosa found himself politically sidelined. The ANC chose his rival, Thabo Mbeki, to be Mandela’s successor. Ramaphosa, who cut his teeth in the trade union movement and the mass internal struggle against apartheid, came from a tradition of robust and open democratic practice. Trade union congresses were held in public and there were sometimes raucous contestations for leadership roles. Mbeki came from the exile tradition where operations were clandestine and information was shared on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. Leadership decisions were taken behind closed doors and complete unity presented to the outside world. Mbeki’s presidency and that of his successor, Jacob Zuma, saw the application of this exile mindset to national politics, and the opacity of the ANC sat uneasily with the transparency, accountability and openness of the Constitution of the republic. The question everyone was asking as Ramaphosa took office in the Union Buildings was this: can the man in the middle lead from the front? In other words, can Ramaphosa disrupt the political narrative, transforming it from one of fear and rumour into one of hope and optimism? Can Ramaphosa drag the ANC out of the shadows and turn it into a modern political force that operates comfortably in a constitutional democracy? This book attempts to answer these questions by looking at how Ramaphosa has handled the key challenges he has faced in the trade union movement, in business and in politics. These questions are not easy to answer because Ramaphosa remains one of the best-kept secrets in South African politics, seldom offering anything of himself beyond carefully considered public statements. One of those I spoke to before writing this book was former mining executive Bobby Godsell. As a young man, Godsell sat opposite Ramaphosa during negotiations over wages and working conditions on Anglo American mines. He worked with Ramaphosa on the National Peace Accord, and encountered him again when Anglo entered into the first big empowerment deal of the democratic era, the sale of Johnnic to a consortium of black investors led by Ramaphosa. ‘Remember,’ Godsell told me, ‘he’s a man of many parts.’ Ramaphosa came from a middle-class background – his father was a policeman. And then he had studied law. ‘Law and politics are often pretty connected,’ remarked Godsell. Ramaphosa is a fascinating subject because he spans so many of the territories where this story has unfolded. He was a student leader. He was critically involved in the struggle against apartheid as a trade unionist. And then he became the key figure at the constitutional talks to shape the new democratic order. He exited formal politics to build a business empire, and then returned to the political coalface only to find that the machinery he had helped put in place was badly in need of repair. Of course, the fact that he has now become president of the republic makes him all the more intriguing a subject. He is at once charming and reserved. He defers to authority and yet he projects authority. He is driven to navigate the country’s destiny and yet, at times, appears helplessly afloat on the tide. What does he stand for? The answer is at once in plain sight and obscured by clouds of circuitous reasoning. * Let us start where all political narratives should, with the greater context. This is the age of disruption. Wherever you care to look, you will see traditional political paradigms collapsing and a new raw politics emerging. Propelling this is a rising tide of anger at the failure of the establishment – as often a settled democratic order as an authoritarian one – to deliver answers to a set of core problems that are the result of the way the world of work is changing. Rationalisation, outsourcing and vast increases in productivity have been followed by the appearance of machines and algorithms that can do the tasks that once employed millions and fed their families. Economic certainties about the ability of democratic capitalism to deliver a rising level of prosperity for the ordinary person have been smashed by a succession of financial crises and by the fact that the wealth effect has not benefited the vast majority of people. At the same time, the capacity of a society to insulate itself from these effects, or from the social or economic collapse of other states, has lessened as the world has become more integrated. In the US, Donald Trump took office – somewhat disingenuously – as a man of the people who wished to overturn the political applecart. What got him elected was that he could credibly argue that he was not part of the government that had presided over two decades of wealth accumulation without the benefits being spread to ordinary people. In the UK, a similar revolt against the old ways of doing things by those on the receiving end of failed economic policies saw, first, a vote in favour of leaving the European Union – the so-called Brexit vote – and, second, a surprising electoral swing against Conservative prime minister Theresa May and towards Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, until then regarded as unelectable. In France,...