PETER BRUCE: Who else but Cyril?
What I want is for Ramaphosa to buy himself enough time to get our institutions right. He has made a good start and I’d rather have him at the helm than almost anyone else in our politics
I can almost hear the conversation. "Ask Peter Bruce," says the editor of the FM. He’s talking to his colleagues about a feature on whether people should vote for Cyril Ramaphosa on May 8. Someone’s writing about why we should avoid Ramaphosa. I’m the patsy to support him. It’s my own fault. Last October I was in a bar near Cape Town and the barman, an Afrikaans guy who recognised me, started talking politics. "I’m voting for Cyril," he said, "despite the expletive expletive ANC." At least he is there and can do some good, he said. I’d been thinking the same and wrote a column about the prospect of older white men like me (I’m 66) voting ANC on May 8, despite its atrocious record in office. The response was wild. Letters poured in denouncing me. The worse it got, the more determined I became to follow my heart. Why Ramaphosa? Because he is a fundamentally decent man trying his best to right the SA ship from an extremely difficult angle. His party is deeply corrupt, he himself is com...
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