Extract Fikile Mbalula is absolutely right. The ANC would have polled 40% or much less if the party still had Jacob Zuma (or one of his proxies) as its head. Ramaphosa has now helped the ANC win a comfortable 57.5 % of the vote. He has clung on by a hair in Gauteng. He has rescued the ANC from nine years of Zuma and his thugs. He now needs to act, and act fast. There is no time. The first thing he has to do is to assert his authority and power swiftly, and transform the ANC. He will never be as powerful as he is now. He won the Nasrec conference in 2017 by a sliver. He has helped the ANC scrape through now. He mustn’t waste the moment. He is the president of the party and he is its chief spokesperson. He therefore has to put his stamp on the party because people such as Ace Magashule are trying to keep the party on a war footing with him. The post-election warring has already begun, with the party’s general secretary quoted on Friday as saying: “I want to see a cabinet of men and wo...

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