Cyril Ramaphosa: Architect of social compacts
The new leader of the ANC has much to draw on from a sterling career in several areas of institutional construction, and his National Development Plan is waiting to be dusted off
SA’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), has a new president — Cyril Ramaphosa. But who is he? Ramaphosa is a fitting choice to take over the government, stabilise the economy, and secure the constitutional architecture that he helped to create at the end of apartheid. But to expect more would be expecting too much. He is unlikely to veer far from the traditional economic path chosen by the ANC. We can draw on important features of his career for some conjecture about the man. The early days Ramaphosa was born in Johannesburg, the industrial heartland of SA, on November 17 1952. The second of the three children of a policeman, he grew up in Soweto where he attended primary and the first years of high school. He moved on to Mphaphuli High School in Sibasa, Limpopo, were he was elected head of the Student Christian Movement soon after his arrival. He studied law at the then University of the North (Turfloop), where he became active in the South African Students Organ...
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