Which Ramaphosa just stood up?
2012-12-20 12:34
Reaction to Cyril Ramaphosa's election as deputy
president of the African National Congress is absolutely fascinating. Those of
a more business bent think they have a shot now of more faithful ruling party commitment
to business friendly policies. ANC comrades who remember Ramaphosa in the
workers' trenches imagine he will remain a friend of the poor. Still others,
recalling Ramaphosa the negotiator, imagine he will help various stakeholders
in society play nicely with each other.
Yet there is an obvious question that no one can answer
with any real certainty: Which Ramaphosa has just stood up?!
One thing's for sure, the profoundly different takes on
what Ramaphosa's agenda will be both within the ruling party and (soon) within
the state is sympotamic of the ANC's contradictions.
Ramaphosa represents the ideological tensions at the
heart of alliance politics. On the one hand, his political CV contains
admirable evidence of someone who, at some point at least, had a profound sense
of the social and economic injustice suffered by poorly treated workers within
corporate South Africa and within the state. He knows what it means to fight
the justice-blind interests of the wealthy in order to advance the case of
economic reform in the name of substantive equality and economic justice. This
Ramaphosa is a hero of the poor, a hero of the worker on the wrong side of our
horrible Gini co-efficient.
Yet, the later Ramaphosa is a hero of many within the
corporate sector. This Ramaphosa warms the capitalist hearts of captains of
industry. They see him as someone who understand the importance of a smaller
state than the one we have, and the need for cutting down the cost of doing
business South Africa so that more big multinational players like McDonalds
may flock to the tip of Africa. For these corporate citizens, Ramaphosa
symbolises the prospect of greater labour market flexibility, and a greater
degree of respect for the efficiency of markets to deliver us from development
evils.
For a third group, not prone to ideological battles,
Ramaphosa yet symbolises something else -- compromise. For these folk,
Ramaphosa's glory days as the face of peaceful transition towards democracy
(next to enlightened Afrikaner politician Roelf Meyer), means a chance of a
"social pact" being forged. Perhaps he can do for the economy what he
did for us politically; that is, help us negotiate our differences on how to
achieve economic justice.
So, which Ramaphosa will we get? We don't know. And we
can't know. Only time will tell. If the ANC allowed transparent lobbying then
maybe we would know. Of course, the ANC's elections are still a mostly
behind-the-scenes affair, so Ramaphosa now occupies a senior position within
the party without once having publicly articulated why he accepted the
nomination.
We therefore cannot predict which Ramaphosa will emerge
in the months and years ahead.
Two things are certain though. First, Ramaphosa is not
bigger than the ANC. He is also not the only nor the first or the last
uber-rich person within the ANC's leadership structure. To pretend he will be
able to impose himself ideologically and operationally on the party and state
is to betray ignorance of the party's history of constraining rampant individualism.
Second, the obsession with projecting your favourite
hopes onto Ramaphosa is revealing. We are simply nakedly showing our
desperation for a hero.
(Anyone seen my Bonnie Tyler album?)
- McKaiser’s book
A Bantu in my Bathroom is now available from
all leading bookstores. Ebooks can be bought from Amazon.com and epub
and pdf versions can be bought on-line from Exclusives Books and
Kalahari.com - Eusebius McKaiser is an associate at the Wits Centre for Ethics. Follow @eusebius on Twitter.
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