PETER BRUCE: Cyril Ramaphosa and Theresa May – leaders but not believers
Ramaphosa may not be facing the same levels of rebellion as May but that may be because he has held his party together by not instituting any serious policy reforms
President Cyril Ramaphosa and British Prime Minister Theresa May should probably talk more often. They have a lot in common. It isn’t anything personal. They’re not weak people. But they’re both in weak political positions. Late last week Ramaphosa had to drop everything and rush off to KwaZulu-Natal to mollify the Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini, after the latter had made threatening noises about what might happen should the Ramaphosa government’s pursuit of land expropriation without compensation be applied to the Ingonyama Trust, which controls much of the land and the people in the province. As he was visiting the king, promising that not a blade of royal grass would be touched, May was having an ordeal of her own, in front of a meeting of her divided cabinet at the PM’s country retreat, Chequers. She was trying to craft a final position on how Britain would withdraw from the European Union (EU) in March next year. Both leaders are trapped trying to implement decisions wi...
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