RAY HARTLEY: In the kraal of King Cyril
After the Great Stonewalling of my request for a contemporary interview, I was surprised when he phoned me one evening a few weeks ago ...
It was a strange experience. Cyril Ramaphosa was celebrating his 65th birthday with a party at the FNB convention centre in Sandton. Except it wasn't just a birthday party. It was also the launch of a book by Ramaphosa, Cattle of the Ages. Guests included some fired cabinet ministers - Blade Nzimande, Pravin Gordhan - and a spread of the political, business and communist elite (only in South Africa) in favour of his campaign for the presidency. The reason it was a strange experience was that I had just obtained the first copy of my book Ramaphosa: The man who would be king. Mine was not an "authorised biography" of the type where the author has unlimited access to the subject and writes 600 pages of detailed description. I had interviewed Ramaphosa in depth a while back and this had provided me with a useful perspective on his struggle with Thabo Mbeki for the deputy presidency (he told me he had been Nelson Mandela's first choice) back in the early '90s and countless other events t...
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