Since the demise of the parliamentary sovereignty of the white component of SA and its replacement with constitutional democracy under the rule of law, there have been three two-term presidents in SA. Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded one-term Nelson Mandela, our iconic Nobel Peace Prize-winning first post-apartheid president; Jacob Zuma, who defeated Mbeki at the 2007 ANC conference held in Polokwane, and Cyril Ramaphosa, who in turn succeeded Zuma.
The constitutional limitation of two terms per president did not apply to Mandela who chose to quit active politics after one full term, nor to Kgalema Motlanthe, who acted as a bench-warmer while Zuma was temporarily ineligible to succeed Mbeki, immediately after the latter’s resignation. That ineligibility arose from Zuma being dismissed as deputy president by Mbeki after Zuma’s “financial adviser” Schabir Shaik was convicted and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for having a corrupt relationship with Zuma.
Any sitting president who happens to be an ANC member at the end of his second term is unlikely to see out the term in full, owing to the holding of an ANC elective conference about two years before the expiration of the second term. Zuma’s ousting of Mbeki led to his forced resignation in September 2008, and in the same way, Zuma was forced to resign on Valentine’s Day 2018, after Ramaphosa won an unexpected victory in the ANC leadership race at Nasrec in 2017. The CR17 campaign was not meant to succeed, in Zuma’s view; he expected to be succeeded by his ex-wife, Nkosasana Dlamini-Zuma. However, the late DD Mabuza, a long-standing Zuma loyalist, jumped ship at the eleventh hour with enough Mpumalanga delegates and sided with Ramaphosa, for which Mabuza was rewarded with the Deputy-Presidency of the country.
It seems likely that our three two-term presidents will not be well remembered when the history of their leadership is written.
Three features of the Mbeki presidency will surely stand out for the historians.
Mbeki was an HIV-AIDS denialist, as a result of which more than 300,000 of his fellow citizens died. This form of irrationality was ended when the Treatment Action Campaign succeeded in persuading the Constitutional Court to make a landmark decision to put a stop to the refusal by the Mbeki-era authorities to prescribe anti-AIDS medication to pregnant mothers.
Secondly, Mbeki favoured what he called “quiet diplomacy” to deal with the theft of the 2002 election by his friend Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. The consequence of the quiet diplomacy was that Mugabe stayed in power and continued to pillage the coffers of his country, even after a report by Justices Moseneke and Khampepe revealed that the 2002 election in Zimbabwe was neither free nor fair. The two justices famously concluded in their confidential report to Mbeki that the elections were not free and fair, due to severe pre-election violence, intimidation, and restrictive laws. The report was kept confidential until 2014, long after anything could be done about the irregularities found by the two justices. A long legal battle by The Mail and Guardian newspaper eventually succeeded in achieving the release of the report in 2014. Mugabe was eventually deposed in a military coup in November 2017, not before his leadership of his country caused millions of his fellow citizens to depart for greener pastures, mainly in SA. Today Zimbabwe, once the bread-basket of Africa, is a failed state and the basket-case of the region.
The third Mbeki claim to fame is his role in the arms deals. The SA government negotiated four arms deals in 1999, while he was president, for the acquisition of armaments from European arms manufacturers. The deals were peppered with irregularities in the form of failure to comply with procurement rules, corruption and the taking of loans from foreign sources in breach of the law of SA. The biggest deal, the British Aerospace supply of fighter and trainer jets to SA, is still the subject of pending litigation in the High Court. The “visionary approach to cost”, championed by the Mbeki cabinet, makes a nonsense of Section 217 of the Constitution. The arms deals have been described as the “litmus test” of the willingness of the ANC to play within the rules created in the Constitution. It is a test failed on Mbeki’s watch.
Jacob Zuma will be remembered for his unauthorised improvements to the Nkandla homestead in which his family resides, and for his relationship with the Gupta family which spawned the phenomenon in SA known as “state capture”. The former led to Zuma being forced out of office in disgrace after an empty apology to the nation, and the latter was the subject of a commission of inquiry chaired by the former Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, in which the ANC featured as “accused number one”, according to Ramaphosa. The commission identified over 1400 criminal suspects, including nearly 100 leading lights in the ANC. Commensurate prosecutions have not followed, save in isolated form against Vincent Smith and Zizi Kodwa. Zuma himself was briefly imprisoned for failing to respect a summons to give evidence at the commission.
What then of the legacy of the current incumbent, Cyril Ramaphosa? He came to power promising renewal of the ANC and effective reform in relation to corruption. Neither has occurred. The notion of futuristic new cities and bullet trains linking them to the more established areas of the country has proved to be a pipe dream. Ramaphosa’s promises to clean up corruption, implement the Zondo Commission findings, and run a cleaner administration better able to deliver services and make the promises of the Bill of Rights the lived reality of his poor countrymen and women have proved to be empty.
The Phala Phala scandal is still playing itself out both in parliament and the courts. A long-delayed review of the findings of the Ngcobo Panel, which concluded that Ramaphosa may well have a case to answer in respect of the goings-on at Phala Phala back in 2020, has recently been launched. It may have been launched too late to save Ramaphosa the embarrassment of being questioned by Glynnis Breytenbach and Julius Malema in his removal-from-office inquiry before a committee of the National Assembly. According to Ramaphosa, the review (abortively started in the Constitutional Court which, very properly, declined to exercise jurisdiction in the matter), was shelved on the basis that other litigation rendered the review moot. This is an open question that finds itself in highly contested territory. If it was a mistake to regard the review as moot, the delay in reviving it when it transpires that it was not moot may not suit Ramaphosa, simply because reviews are meant to occur within a reasonable time, not years down the road. The notion of the review being moot is, obviously and for all to see, plainly wrong after the Constitutional Court judgment of 8 May 2026, which has breathed new life into the impeachment motion.
It seems, regardless of the outcome of the review and the removal-from-office proceedings, that Ramaphosa will not see out the entirety of his second term. In December next year the ANC will elect a new leadership. That will trigger fresh ANC factional activity in which Ramaphosa is likely to be a casualty. The MKP, founded by Zuma, is eroding the electoral support of the ANC. Many of the ANC’s public representatives, fearing a smaller slice of the electorate’s cake, will be looking over their shoulders at a future outside politics. Ramaphosa is no longer an electoral asset, and hasn’t been for years.
What is it that renders two-term presidents in SA so vulnerable to being ousted in their second term?
The over-concentration of power in the office of the president is a possible reason. Back in the nineteenth century, Lord Acton, a British peer, had occasion to address the underlying issue. He wrote:
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
More recently, the former Deputy Chief Justice, Dikgang Moseneke, has publicly warned that there is an over-concentration of power in the hands of the president in SA. He has criticized the South African Constitution for creating an “imperial Presidency” that concentrates too much appointment and executive power in a single individual. He argued that this structure lacks sufficient internal mechanisms to temper presidential authority and safeguard critical state institutions from political whim. His key critiques of the architecture of the presidency in SA include:
Vast Appointment Powers. Justice Moseneke highlighted that the president holds near-unilateral power to appoint key officials, including Cabinet ministers, judges, and heads of the NPA, police, and intelligence.
Power of Summary Dismissal. The ability to unilaterally appoint also means the president can dismiss ministers, a dynamic that has caused executive instability.
The “Mandela Exception”. He noted that the Constitution was designed around the trusted leadership of Nelson Mandela, leaving the system vulnerable to abuse by subsequent leaders.
The solutions proposed by the learned Justice include revisiting power distribution in SA: he has suggested that South Africa needs to review how power is concentrated, advocating for critical appointments to be made by collectives rather than one individual.
As regards the purpose of public power: Justice Moseneke emphasized that public power must serve the public good, not personal interest, and that the ultimate, legitimate authority lies with the citizenry.
The full address on this important topic by Justice Moseneke was given in 2016 at a gathering of the Nelson Mandela Foundation under the title “The Constitution after twenty years”.
See also: https://accountabilitynow.org.za/does-the-president-have-too-much-power-yes-and-no/.
Paul Hoffman SC is a director of Accountability Now
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/governmentza/40395001681]
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