President Cyril Ramaphosa has apologised to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu for the way the ANC had lost its way in recent years. Ramaphosa, speaking in Sandton on Thursday night to professionals from various sectors, said he had apologised to Tutu for driving him to a "point of despair", a move which nearly brought both men to tears. Tutu, a Nobel laureate, has been a vocal critic of the ANC under former president Jacob Zuma, even warning him in a public address that he would start praying for the defeat of the ANC as he had done for the apartheid government. Addressing professionals is part of a key strategy for the ANC ahead of the 2019 election, after its electoral support in the 2014 polls in Gauteng — a largely urbanised province — dropped by nearly ten percentage points. The decline in support for the ANC among Gauteng’s black middle class as well as across the country has been well documented in its own reports and assessment of its electoral performances. The meeting with ...

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