Duduzane Zuma |
Cyril Ramaphosa conveniently jetted off to London on Tuesday, 22 November as the first international leader to be feted with a state visit hosted by King Charles III and the Queen Consort.
It is a remarkable honour for him and a testament to the enduring post-colonial friendship between South Africa and the United Kingdom, which emerged more deeply entwined than ever after apartheid ended 28 years ago.
For Ramaphosa, it is a gilt-edged opportunity to reinforce South Africa’s status as a leader of the African continent.
The trappings of this ceremony will act as a welcome relief for Ramaphosa, whose presidency is buffeted by economic decay, social, political unrest, and corruption—including a multi-million-dollar cash robbery at his Phala Phala farmhouse. His state visit will bring talks of stronger economic ties, shared values on the global stage, and climate emergency commitments.
But Ramaphosa’s most urgent challenge requires him to deliver radical political and economic transformation that will ensure that SA is open for business investors and that the next generation of the young workforce is guaranteed sustainable sources of income.
Our country is at a critical point on the pockmarked road since Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom.
In the next few weeks, Ramaphosa will, in spite of the events at Phala Phala, seek the ANC’s backing to remain as its leader going into the 2024 general election.
Current polling indicates that the ANC will fail to achieve a majority in that election for the first time since 1994.In some parts of the country, its vote has fallen by over 40 percent. Whatever the history, no party can survive without capturing the future.
Without any fear of contradiction, I can boldly list multiple reasons for the decline in support.
The most apparent ones are systemic corruption, spiralling crime levels, repeated service delivery failures, a high cost of living, and a stagnant economy, which, among many things can be directly linked to constant loadshedding.
Unemployment has soared to over 50 %.
The wealth gap is ever increasing, and the growing discontent has been visible with large-scale rioting and looting in July 2021 as well as sporadic countrywide violent protests.
Instead of going down, all these social ills are rapidly increasing under ramaphoria’s new dawn.
The average age of the South African population is 28, yet the senior ranks of the ANC are filled by those in their late 60s and 70s. They, like the previous presidents’ Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, and my father Jacob Zuma, were all part of the freedom movement.
The leadership still spends too much time fighting old wars and tribal battles. The failure to add newer, younger post-apartheid blood into the ruling echelons of the party serves to ignore the core voter base of the lowest income earners, the peri-urban and rural poor.
It’s no surprise that the vast majority of the 10 million people who failed to register to vote in the last election were young. I believe that there are three critical challenges that Ramaphosa and the current ANC leadership must deal with.
Firstly, to deliver social justice through economic prosperity. In other words, that means ensuring people’s human rights to proper healthcare, to a decent, well-paid job, to a home, to feeling safe from crime, and to the elimination of food and energy insecurity.
To achieve these, we must empower a multi-racial middle class to build businesses and do good work, and we need to recognize that South Africa operates in a global marketplace and therefore encourages and supports inward investment while simultaneously enabling growth in the domestic business sector.
Crucially: There needs to be complete transparency in how the state attracts and procures services from abroad. Any candidate seeking to stand for the ANC leadership should support an absolutist policy of procurement transparency, which in turn must be rigorously invigilated by outside, independent scrutiny.
Secondly: We need a new vision that harnesses and empowers the disadvantaged and alienated younger generation. When a majority of the population was born after apartheid, South Africa needs to move beyond the narrative of liberation struggles.
South African youth, regardless of race, gender, and need to chart that new journey into the future with fresh ideas, a digital-first mantra, and a renewed ideology that reclaims the spirit of 1994. Political reform at the national level and within the ANC will play a key role.
The ANC must move away from the current system of recycling old leaders, which resembles a retirement scheme for the politically connected.
Thirdly: Our education system needs a root-and-branch overhaul. Far too many of our schools and colleges are second-rate. We must reform the curriculum and teacher training; invest in massive vocational training programs allied with major infrastructure projects, and give people free access to online learning and upskilling.
These are the tests and challenges that the ANC faces today. Instead of leadership paralysis and discord, we need sharp and concise policy and efficient implementation. We need a new contract of hope and aspiration with the people.
Nobody understood this better than former President Nelson Mandela: that our dreams must be bigger than our fears.
Since his passing, our fears have been allowed to ferment again. It is past time for the Rainbow Nation to rediscover its ability to dream.
