It seems the media have fallen hook, line and sinker for the “Farmgate” diversion thrown out by the ANC’s desperate “radical economic transformation” (RET) faction, by elevating the accusations against President Cyril Ramaphosa to the level of the crimes committed by Jacob Zuma et al.
Those crimes involved stealing billions of rand from SA, destroying its institutions and bringing it to the edge of disaster.
Ramaphosa has not been accused of corruption or theft, and a more reasoned reaction to this fightback should be, “is this the best you can do?” While one can expect political opportunists to jump up and down with holier-than-thou purists, serious people should see the difference between the accusations against a president, which on the face of it appear to be at most technical forex offences, and the ones against the RET personalities, which the president, for all his hesitations, has been pursuing.
It should be clear that those screaming the loudest for Ramaphosa to go are those who are understandably the most afraid of the closing net, while the rest of us should support Ramaphosa in his admittedly glacially slow actions against them.
Sydney Kaye
Cape Town
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