Thebe Mabanga
President Cyril Ramaphosa now arguably has a month to ignite or even save his presidency, or face the daunting prospect of approaching his party’s National General Council (NGC) in June with the embarrassing possibility of being recalled, or be threatened with a recall.
Ramaphosa’s tenure is now turning out to be a classic case study of how euphoria turns into despair and disillusion when words are not followed by action, or, when credibility is eroded by perceptions that a leader is prone to uttering falsehoods, or outright lies, to fend off criticism and save his blushes when under pressure at a particular moment.
He now has three critical events ahead of him within which to redeem himself or all mantras associated with his term in office, from ‘New Dawn’ to ‘Thuma Mina,’ will continue to ring hollow.
The first event is next week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where international investors will want to hear the President’s plans to grow the economy, starting with that giant elephant in the room, Eskom.
That of course is assuming he does not get to cut his trip short to attend to some domestic crisis, be it protests in some part of the country, as he did with North West on a trip to the United Kingdom when he should not have or due to severe load shedding as he did on a trip to Cairo in Egypt, when he was correct to do so.
The next engagement is the ANC Lekgotla which precedes and informs his next critical assignation, the State of the Nation Address (SONA) in mid-February.
After that, he needs a critical ally in Finance Tito Mboweni to deliver a budget that is rich in detail on how his vision will be implemented.
If he cannot use this opportunity to convince detractors and supporters alike that he is in control, he may as well start thinking of alternative career prospects beyond the presidency.
The ANC: The enemy within
Ramaphosa’s first big problem is the party he leads, or rather the party whose faction he leads, the ANC.
Conscious of the slender lead with which he took power in Nasrec in December 2017, and subject to open warfare with those he defeated led by ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule, Ramaphosa has neither the appetite nor the ammunition to crush dissent within the ranks.
Yet this should have been his first order of business. He now faces an embarrassing prospect of having a motion of no confidence or outright recall being raised even in the build up to NGC or on the conference floor.
Even if the motion does not get debated, that it be raised is embarrassing enough.
Ramaphosa should have made it clear to supporters of former President Jacob Zuma that if the ANC were to break up, he and his moneyed associates have the means to form and fund a successful breakaway party, as subsequent revelations of his campaign and the ANC’s election campaign demonstrated.
They on the other hand, need the largesse of state power to survive, a fact demonstrated by their inability to raise legal funding for Zuma.
It is thus in their interest that the ANC remains in power for them to even breathe, let alone have something to loot. Thus, retention of power by the ANC should be their ultimate guiding goal.
Ramaphosa also need to stare down those critics within the party who complain that he is not implementing the party’s resolutions, most notably on land and nationalisation of the Reserve Bank.
He can point that there are many resolutions that remain unimplemented, going back to the party’s conference in Stellenbosch in 2004. Where are the state owned pharmaceutical and construction companies that were to be formed to intervene in those critical sectors?
The state owned mining company has been set up but has hardly had the desired impact on the pricing of coal for electricity generation for example. So, the selective zeal with which he is expected to implement certain resolutions are both misplaced and disingenuous.
And as Mboweni pointed out this week, the resolution on the privatisation of the Reserve Bank needs a rethink.
Yes, the idea of the Reserve Bank being in private hands is hard to accept but those who want to have the Reserve Bank privatised think they can then influence policies like inflation targeting, which is set by Treasury, or the composition of the Monetary Policy Committee to influence rates decision.
Neither of those will happen by privatising the Reserve Bank and you can achieve both without privatising the Bank.
So the proponents need to be clear about what their intentions, beyond
bashing Ramaphosa, are.
Most importantly, Ramaphosa needs to modernize the ANC as a mobilising and policy machinery and decide party numbers, voter numbers and matters such as the power of branches against those of the NEC, as branches were not consulted when two presidents were recalled ten years apart and the appointment of Premiers and mayors, which was removed from the hands of the president by the victors of Polokwane.
Party strategist Joel Netshitenze’s guide, offered in 2007, that a governing party should aim to have 5% of the electorate as its membership means that from a pool of 23 million voters the ANC should aim for membership of a million and a little more than the 11 million voters to ensure a firmer grip on power.
Eskom
Ramaphosa’s management, or lack of it, on Eskom is most puzzling.
Here is a man who, in December 2014 was appointed to head up the Eskom War Room with a clutch of minister’s, Eskom itself, and senior technical officials. Yet five years later, he is still shocked by stage 6 load shedding and is astounded by the scale of the Medupi power plant.
More importantly, he appears to have no view on the most basic challenges bedevilling the ailing utility.
The first issue that he must address is the question of Eskom’s debt burden of R440 billion, which Eskom indicated on a London investor roadshow last August, that they would like to have it transferred to the state balance sheet and a strained fiscus.
Or can the debt be restructured in any other way?
Ramaphosa needs to instruct the National Treasury to advise if or rather when and how this can be done; how much of the debt burden can the state take on; make a preliminary announcement in SONA; followed by a detailed announcement in the Budget next month.
Having the debt restructured or transferred would free up cash flows for the utility and ease pressure on future tariff increase applications, although the state-owned power entity has shown that the first beneficiaries of such a move would be the executives and senior managers with their bonuses.
The second issue is whether Eskom can complete its initial R 350 billion build programme comprising Medupi and Kusile power station functioning optimally and feeding into the grid.
Successful completion of the build programme would allow for an increase in revenue and slow the drain on
cash flow.
When and how is this expected to happen? Spelling it our clearly with timelines will boost investor confidence.
Ramaphosa has not answered these questions or if he has, he has done so in a way that is glib and unsatisfactory or, given recent events and a growing track record of misleading or being misled, markets simply do not believe him. Claiming sabotage the reason for the rolling blackouts has not helped, with ANC Veteran Tokyo Sexwale last week describing the move as “irresponsible.”
With the resignation of Jabu Mabuza, Ramaphosa now has a chance to reconfigure the Eskom board and infuse it with some international experience.
There was a time, around 2010, when the board had directors such as Lars Josefson, a Swedish academic then practicing in Germany; Hee Beom Lee,
a South Korean engineer, as well as John Mirenge, a Rwandan lawyer who served alongside seasoned South African directors who at various points included Bobby Godsell, who quit in exasperation over the handling of Jacob Maroga’s resignation, ABSA chair Wendy Lucas Bull and Arcelor Mittal chair Mpho Makwana.
The current board, even with additional appointments since it was first appointed in 2017, still feels inward looking and insular while a few scientists and energy experts like Rob Crompton have been added.
It still lacks hands on engineering expertise. Sifiso Dabengwa is an electrical engineer and a former Eskom executive, but his value now lies in directing and analysing the capex programme rather than keeping the lights on.
Interim chair Professor Malegapuru Makgoba is a distinguished immunologist and public health practitioner and academic but he too would be astounded at the scale of Medupi’s challenges.
Economy
On the economy, Ramaphosa has lost the patience and support of senior business leaders who are now openly calling for him to implement structural reforms or face downgrade to Junk status.
What he and these leaders are not spelling out clearly though, is what these reforms constitute and who must make sacrifices for it to happen?
Is it consumers? Business? Labour? Everyone?
Thus far, workers have borne the brunt of market forces through retrenchments and senior public servants are about to be sacrificed
to cut the public sector wage bill.
What are senior executives giving up in making these reforms possible? Will the private sector absorb senior civil servants who lose their jobs?
No one seems to have asked these questions.
Ramaphosa needs a frank discussion of these before he can move on them
Allies: Pravin Gordhan and Gwede Mantashe
Another major concern for Ramaphosa is public enterprise minister Pravin Gordhan, who is fast morphing from a trusted ally to a liability.
It now feels like Gordhan should have resigned when, on the even of appointing the cabinet, Public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane and a damning but subsequently challenged report on Gordhan and the infamous rogue unit at SARS.
At the time, Gordhan was also locked in court battle with the Economic Freedom Fighters.
He and Ramaphosa must have felt he cannot give his enemies, real or perceived, in and outside the ANC, the satisfaction of quitting.
But now his presence is a distraction, and he may be better off fighting to
clear his name from the sidelines of semi-retired life or a diplomatic posting
Another ally under fire is Minerals and energy minister Gwede Mantashe, who is openly being accused of being an opponent of renewable energy to protect his coal mining constituency.
For a man who restored good relations and some confidence in the mining sector, this appears to be a narrow and unfair attack backed by perceived slow movement on renewables.
It could be that Mantashe recognises that moving to renewables is not the panacea for the country’s energy crisis, and the promised falling prices that proponents of renewables highlight do not always materialise.
But he needs to vociferously push back against his critics.
Revelations about Mantashe’s and Mboweni’s private lives do not appear to have damaged either that much, but Ramaphosa would have been powerless to reprimand them anyway , having survived his own, contested,
revelations ahead of his election triumph, earning the nickname ‘cupcake’ in the process.
He has far more pressing matters to deal with.
If Ramaphosa fails to use the next month to ignite or save his presidency, he will remain in office but will be a Dead President Walking, waiting to conclude a single unconvincing term or worse, a motion to be recalled at the NGC in June.
Indeed, deeds, not words, will save Ramaphosa.
Thebe Mabanga is a communications consultant and freelance writer
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Inside Politic.
