Writing on the academic website The Conversation, head of Wits School of Governance David Everatt traces the bewildering 128 days between the installation of President Cyril Ramaphosa and April 27, Freedom Day. No doubt Ramaphosa will suffer setbacks, he writes. "But after 128 days of good fortune and clear-minded action, it does seem that South Africa has emerged, blinking, into the sunlight and may again hope and dream. That’s quite a gift for Freedom Day." As Everatt points out appropriately, Ramaphosa faced enormous scepticism. He was deputy to former president Jacob Zuma’s "nightmare" presidency, he was one of the top six ANC officials and Zuma happened under his nose. "South Africans were repeatedly warned that he’d become leader, by a slim majority, of the same ANC that made Zuma. And that he would be weak, immobilised, imprisoned by the compromise among the top six that got elected at the ANC conference to run the party." Even before this the sceptics held the predominant an...
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