ONE STEP FORWARD
ANALYSIS: How Cyril Ramaphosa won the ANC (sort of)
New ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa will need all his skill and charm to get a divided party on the same track — not only to save its dignity at the polls in 2019 but to ensure he becomes president of SA and gets the country working again. Cyril Ramaphosa is the new ANC president, but his victory has been poisoned. He will be heading a mixed slate of ANC leaders after beating Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma by 179 votes — not a commanding victory over the candidate favoured by outgoing party leader, Jacob Zuma. After a two-decade wait for the top position in the party, Ramaphosa was elected president with 2,440 votes to his rival’s 2,261. He is no newcomer to the ANC’s top six. In 1991 he was elected secretary-general (with Zuma his deputy) and was head of the party’s negotiations commission at the Convention for a Democratic SA (Codesa).
It was supposedly because of this that he resigned as ANC secretary-general and from parliament in 1996, and became a leading businessman. He has, howe...
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