PETER BRUCE: The DA should take note that the give-and-take of politics can lead to some cringey hook-ups
In politics, everything is compromise. A deal. And it is slow. Watching President Cyril Ramaphosa try to right the country without exploding his party is an agony. As is watching the mob on my Twitter feed go crazy when he says he is going to implement the ANC December 2017 resolution to nationalise the Reserve Bank.
You would think the world was about to end. But here’s the story, folks: this guy and the group of people around him are the thin red line against our destruction as a country by a deeply criminal element inside his own party.
“Nationalising” the Reserve Bank is a mere technicality. Window-dressing. Ramaphosa doesn’t think it necessary and neither does the DA. The Bank is, to every extent imaginable, 100% subject to the same controls as any independent and reputable central bank in the world. So Ramaphosa has to go along with the left wing of his party and nationalise it. So what? It will still be independent of political interference, to the extent that it already is. It will still target inflation. But rather let’s have hysterics at the mere mention of nationalisation. Ramaphosa should take on his own party instead. It will go on like this for years. Stop and start. He isn’t playing a “long game”. There is no long game. The game is surviving the madness he inherited. He has to deal with the two destructive conference resolutions, on land expropriation and Reserve Bank nationalisation, as deftly as possible, doing as little damage as possible, and report back to the next conference that he has done what ...
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