Panelists in a late-July webinar – it was entitled ‘It’s been a complicated few weeks…’, and included business luminaries Adrian Gore (Discovery), Robbie Brozin (Nando’s) and Mike Abel (M&C Saatchi Abel) – were very bullish about South Africans’ ability to overcome the most severe adversity.
Our much vaunted resilience was repeatedly applauded, and it was said that, notwithstanding the bleakness of the situation, opportunities were there for the taking.
The context was ‘where the country finds itself’ after the period of looting, destruction and death (337 at the last count) earlier in July. The webinar came just two days after President Ramaphosa’s meeting with 90+ business leaders affected by the unrest and looting.
All that cheeriness was disturbing: it was misplaced. If we don’t confront the negatives head-on, we can’t solve the problems.
Those of us enmeshed in politics felt that despite the depredations of apartheid, there was always hope that the ideology would collapse due to its inherent contradictions.
However, some of us feared that when it became inevitable that the African National Congress (ANC) was going to take over, we would end up as a socialist state with all the terrible consequences that that implied.
There was no indication, by 1994, that the ANC had jettisoned the ideology; it clung to it like a limpet to a rock. We hoped that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the deplorable consequences of communism would become too hard to ignore.
Initially it seemed possible: the first 13 years saw us not just overcome the economic disaster of apartheid, but also achieve significant improvements in the lives of blacks in every way.
With the ascendancy of Jacob Zuma things took a turn for much worse than we ever imagined. Under the cloak of advancing socialism, Zuma and his colleagues turned us into a racist, socialist kleptocracy. So when, eight years later, Cyril Ramaphosa became our president, almost everyone in business hailed Ramaphosa’s ‘new dawn’, as he labelled it. ‘Ramaphoria’ broke out across the land. Here was someone who understood business, who had accumulated great wealth through business, and who would embrace reform.
Considerable charm
Ramaphosa’s credentials were burnished by his role as a negotiator in the constitutional negotiations, his trout fishing-enhanced relationship with then National Party negotiator Roelf Meyer, and his considerable charm. His presence on boards of a zillion JSE-listed companies, however, was strictly in his capacity as a loyal cadre of the ANC.
Ramaphosa’s role was to raise money for the ANC from business in exchange for connectivity to government. He was appointed to boards for vast sums of money; half would go to him and half to the ANC, not the government. Ramaphosa is now worth over R6.5 billion.
A few captains of industry have expressed disappointment in him. Ramaphosa invariably arrived late for board meetings, without having opened, let alone read his board pack, and always just voted with the majority.
The view was that he learnt little about business; his appointments were regretted.
Someone who negotiated opposite him during the 1980s, when he was the secretary general of the National Union of Mineworkers, said Ramaphosa hated conflict and would say whatever one wanted him to say to achieve a result.
The late Inkatha Freedom Party MP, Dr Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, relates in memoirs that in 1994 Ramaphosa told him that the ANC’s 25-year strategy to deal with whites would be like boiling a frog alive by raising the temperature very slowly. As a cold-blooded animal, it wouldn’t notice the temperature increase, and would end up being boiled alive. ‘He meant that the black majority would pass laws transferring wealth, land and economic power from white to black slowly and incrementally, until the whites lost all that they had gained in South Africa, but without taking too much from them at any given time to cause them to rebel or fight.’ Ramaphosa has never disavowed those comments.
Committed socialist
In public, Ramaphosa has only ever said that he is a committed socialist. He has never said he is a capitalist or a free marketeer, though he manages to leave business with the impression that he is. However, in his three and a half years in power, he has pushed more legislation to accomplish the socialism promised by the national democratic revolution, and more quickly, than any previous president.
At his recent meeting with investors, Ramaphosa invoked the co-operation of government, business and labour. Labour is irrelevant; it offers nothing except increases for public sector employees that will cost taxpayers over R18 billion.
Ramaphosa is not a lone reformer sitting helplessly between two duelling factions. Ramaphosa leads one of those factions. Both the ‘radical economic transformation’ faction and the Ramaphosa faction want the same socialist outcome that Ramaphosa is spearheading. It is a power struggle, not an ideological struggle.
In his speech, Ramaphosa urged, for the hundredth time, that we ‘push ahead with fundamental social and economic transformation’. He again urged that we ‘mobilise all national resources and capabilities – in both the public and private sectors – to develop our country, build an inclusive economy, and foster social cohesion’. These mean nothing – they are just words he has uttered time and time again.
What did Ramaphosa not say to those 90+ business leaders? He did not say that he would embrace free-market economics; untangle red tape; that the ANC would jettison cadre deployment or BEE; that he would liberalise labour laws; or that he would withdraw EWC and NHI legislation. He didn’t because he won’t; all those business leaders know that these are the only moves that could achieve what he says he wants to achieve.
Be more wary
Powerful, savvy people should be more wary, even mistrustful, of powerful politicians.
Mark Cutifani, Anglo American CEO, cooed to Business Day: ‘We believe that we have a role with all of business to be part of the solution and certainly, from our point of view, we think the pathway forward is one that should be positive.
‘If that’s the worst [the unrest] the bad guys could do, then SA can only go from strength to strength’.
The elite sorely remains out of touch with the rest of us.
According to the news report: ‘Asked about Ramaphosa’s investment drive and the damage done by the unrest, (Cutifani) said there was a welcome advance in structural reforms and that businesses were “genuinely keen to invest but they want to understand the framework”.’
What structural reforms would those be, Mr Cutifani?
Ann Bernstein, Executive Director of the Centre for Development and Enterprise, said Ramaphosa’s government ‘is characterised by drift, incoherence, incompetence, inattention and complacency’. Moreover, ‘the endless talk of compacts should be seen for what it is – a failure to lead’.
She says that business should stop cheer-leading the president and instead impress on him that it is now or never.
A president who is destroying our rights is not our friend. Those with the power of money and ability should be making any assistance to the government strictly conditional. And they should do so publicly.
We need to see our business leaders showing less deference and more moxie: we’re in huge trouble because of our president and the party that he leads, not despite them.
[Image: GovernmentZA]
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