TONY LEON: Cyril Ramaphosa can take valuable pointers from Roosevelt’s play book
And Doris Kearns Goodwin’s latest book offers a fascinating new study on presidential leadership which could come in handy for him
A year ago today, Cyril Ramaphosa was inaugurated as SA president, taking over a country on the verge of a nervous, indeed general, breakdown after the rampaging excesses and gross delinquencies of the Jacob Zuma administration. Leaving aside the highly inconvenient fact that Ramaphosa was the number two man at the helm for more than half the period while the Zuma locusts ate, the newish president could address the nation last Thursday with the measured assurance that he was, painfully but procedurally, rightsizing the listing ship of state. He ended his polished state of the nation address with a rousing quote from Theodore Roosevelt’s famous Man in the Arena speech at the Sorbonne in 1910. Of the many improvements of the Ramaphosa administration over its predecessor is the fact that the current president can deliver a competent, sometimes compelling, address, with credibility. But there are few truly original themes or visions that have not already been mined by others in some for...
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