QAANITAH HUNTER
KWELA BOOKS
For my late mother, Nazira Hunter.
This is for you.
Abbreviations and acronyms
ANCAfrican National Congress
ANC NECAfrican National Congress National Executive Committee
ANCWLAfrican National Congress Women’s League
BPCBlack People’s Convention
BricsBrazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa
CopeCongress of the People
CosatuCongress of South African Trade Unions
CRCyril Ramaphosa
CR17Cyril Ramaphosa 2017 Campaign
DADemocratic Alliance
EFFEconomic Freedom Fighters
EFGEdelstein Farber Grobler
FPPFreedom Front Plus
FrelimoMozambique Liberation Front
FULFreedom Under Law
HIPAlliance Hellenic Italian and Portuguese Alliance of South Africa
HIVhuman immunodeficiency virus
HSRCHuman Sciences Research Council
IFPInkatha Freedom Party
IpidIndependent Police Investigative Directorate
GDPgross domestic product
GOODSouth African political party
MECMember of the Executive Council
MKUmkhonto weSizwe
MPMember of Parliament
NadelNational Association of Democratic Lawyers
NasrecNational Recreation Centre
NFPNational Freedom Party
NHINational Health Insurance
NPANational Prosecuting Authority
NPNational Party
NSCNational Security Council
NUMNational Union of Mineworkers
NWCNational Working Committee
SABCSouth African Broadcasting Corporation
SACPSouth African Communist Party
SADCSouthern African Development Community
SANDFSouth African National Defence Force
SarsSouth African Revenue Service
SasoSouth African Students’ Organisation
SBSpecial Branch
SGsecretary-general
SONAstate of the nation address
SRCStudent Representative Council
SSAState Security Agency
Super Pacpolitical action committee
UDFUnited Democratic Front
WHOWorld Health Organization
Introduction
On 18 December 2017, Cyril Matamela Ramaphosa clenched his hands together and tried to blink back his tears. But his efforts were in vain as tears welled in his eyes. He had just won the ANC presidency by 179 votes after a long, complicated and hard fight. The ANC was by then in tatters and the country was in crisis. The South African economy appeared to be unfixable and the institutions of state were on the verge of collapse.
The country, even the world, looked to the four thousand ANC delegates gathered at the Nasrec conference centre to the south of Johannesburg for a sign that all was not lost. ANC leaders would later say that the level of public interest in an internal party election was unprecedented. But the ANC was the majority party in South Africa and would be so for the foreseeable future. This meant that the person who won the ANC’s top leadership position would be in charge of the state.
And that’s what happened. Two months later, South Africa saw the accession to power of its fifth democratically elected president since 1994. After weeks of political turmoil and anxiety over the future of the country, Jacob Zuma resigned as president, opening up the way for the newly elected president of the ANC to take over the reins of power. It was as if the restart button had been set on the country after almost a decade of Zuma’s rule.
Political developments often happen at a rapid pace and we are unable to fully digest their impact and make sense of the political dynamics. It is also difficult to connect the dots between these developments in a way that helps us understand what they mean for the country. Based on my own reporting, interviews with newsmakers and months of my following Ramaphosa around, Balance of Power is an effort to reflect on South Africa’s recent history and Ramaphosa’s central role in it.
In this book, I piece together Ramaphosa’s rise to political office and discover what it took to get him there. I include never-before-told accounts and anecdotes of the horse-trading and manoeuvring in the run-up to the Nasrec conference and insider views of what really happened. I also tell the story of Zuma’s last days in office and how he clung on to power almost like a dictator who feared to have his day with the law.
This book also takes a closer look at the transitional period that followed Ramaphosa’s election as president in February 2018 until the 2019 general elections. That transitional period was characterised by efforts to clean up the state, fix ailing institutions and revive the economy. But as Ramaphosa set out to do just that, he was thrown many curveballs, from both within the ANC and externally. He had to balance competing interests, play to his political strengths, mitigate his political weaknesses and take account of the effects of global issues constantly.
Ramaphosa’s election as president will define the near future of South Africa. His election was hailed as a ‘new dawn’ in an explosion of optimism and euphoria about the prospects of this country. But can one man fix years of corruption and lawlessness by himself?
Chapter 1
The return of the ‘prodigal son’
Idon’t know why Ace Magashule confided in me two years ago that it was at his Bloemfontein house in December 2012 that a decision was taken to formally endorse Cyril Ramaphosa for the deputy presidency of the ANC. Central to the plan to bring back the billionaire businessman into active politics and into the party’s leadership were allies of the then party president Jacob Zuma. According to Magashule, who was then Free State premier and longtime ANC provincial chairperson, it was he and Zweli Mkhize, Zuma’s main ally from KwaZulu-Natal, who put the plan in motion to endorse Ramaphosa for the second highest position in the party.
It didn’t make political sense for Magashule to make this disclosure to me in 2017 about a political development that had happened five years previously. It also didn’t serve his interest to create a link between himself and Ramaphosa because by 2017 he was located firmly in the faction that opposed Ramaphosa’s bid for the ANC’s presidency. Magashule was at the time touted as the candidate for the position of ANC secretary-general on the ticket of Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Ramaphosa’s main rival for the presidency. It then occurred to me that Magashule was trying to typecast Ramaphosa as a