JABULANI SIKHAKHANE: Shades of PW as Ramaphosa puts ANC unity above ethics

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s political approach has some historical parallels with PW Botha’s behaviour in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

As state president Botha prioritised the unity of the National Party over political reforms. His reward was a breakaway by the Transvaal wing of his party, which formed the basis of the Conservative Party in 1982. The split hemmed Botha in politically. 

He had also sought to co-opt the business elite through huge conferences at Johannesburg’s Carlton Centre in November 1979 and the Good Hope Centre in Cape Town in November 1981, only to disappoint that elite a few years later. By 1985 the business elite was making overtures to the ANC in Lusaka. 

Ramaphosa has also thus far prized the unity of the ANC over driving the socioeconomic reforms that are required to arrest SA’s decline. Keeping on the ANC election list people who were named by the Zondo commission as beneficiaries of dodgy deals during the state capture era but who chose not to take Zondo’s reports on review to clear their names, is the latest example of Ramaphosa’s emphasis on ANC unity above all else. 

His administration’s relationship with the business elite has over the past five years been characterised by high hopes, despair, and then raised hopes again.   

Reflecting on the late 1970s and early ’80s period under Botha, political scientist Hermann Giliomee noted that he appeared “on his way in 1979 to create a new national atmosphere” — read Ramaphosa’s new dawn, the theme of his February 2018 state of the nation address. Giliomee added that by 1980 it had become clear that Botha was more preoccupied with “technical programmes, the security of the state and creating a managerial form of government”. 

“He said in 1979 he would lead from the front; in 1981 he was trying, like John Vorster, to cast himself as the force uniting in his person all the factions of the National Party. However, this is a role that even Vorster could not sustain as soon as the political and economic crisis of the SA state began to escalate in the mid-1970s. By the end of 1981 both the verligte (progressive) and verkrampte (conservative) factions in the National Party distrusted Botha: the former for what he did not do; the later for what he did do,” Giliomee wrote in The parting of ways. SA politics 1976-1982. 

Destroyed credibility

He added that had Botha pursued reform and kept up the momentum in 1979 “he might have brought the Afrikaner right-wing to disarray”. However, his choice of Afrikaner unity over political reform in 1980 elevated Andries Treurnicht, the National Party Transvaal leader who broke away to form the Conservative Party in February 1982, “to a significance he otherwise would never have had”. 

Botha’s chosen path also meant he destroyed whatever credibility moderate black leaders who tried to work within the system might have had, further complicating whatever reforms Botha later tried to pull off. Ramaphosa has done the same. He made it clear in a July 2018 interview that he prized ANC unity: “My mission is to keep the ANC united, and I intend to succeed in having the ANC united.” 

This approach meant he kept in his cabinet and within the ANC people who didn’t subscribe to his new dawn. His reward has been a continued decline of the economy, and continued dysfunctionality of municipal and provincial governments. 

Last year Jacob Zuma launched the MK Party while remaining an ANC member. Some polls are now suggesting Zuma’s venture will make deep cuts into the ANC’s electoral performance in KwaZulu-Natal in particular, and possibly Mpumalanga. It’s the fear that some of the ANC leaders accused of corruption might jump ship and join Zuma that explains the ANC’s reluctance to leave them off its election list. 

Ramaphosa’s relationship with business has had its ups and downs since he became president in 2018. After a kiss-and-make-up last year he and business organisations established yet another partnership to address the crises in electricity generation and supply, the collapse of freight rail and port operations, as well as the worsening of crime and corruption. 

This week Ramaphosa extolled the virtues of this renewed dalliance: “The remarkable progress made in the partnership between government and business over the last nine months shows just how much we can get done when we work together,” he wrote in his weekly love letter to the nation.

What he forgot to say is how much progress SA would have made had he relentlessly pursued socioeconomic reforms when he took over in 2018, even if that was at the risk of forcing some of his colleagues out of the ANC. 

• Sikhakhane, a former spokesperson for the finance minister, National Treasury and SA Reserve Bank, is editor of The Conversation Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.