JAUNDICED EYE
President Cyril Ramaphosa is a modern Gulliver. Despite the substantial powers of his office, he has been rendered immobile by the combined actions of political midgets.
The Lilliputians in his own African National Congress have the president pinned down, bound tight, rendered useless. Far from being vanquished at the December 2018 leadership conference that put Ramaphosa in the top position, the forces of darkness that coalesced around Jacob Zuma during his presidency are hanging on grimly.
They may not be strong enough to bring him down, yet, but they sure as hell can stop him going forward.
On pressing issues such as joblessness, an ailing economy, and the impending collapse of state-owned entities, there have been few effective interventions. The only matters on which the Ramaphosa government has been able to move are those on which Zuma’s radical economic transformation faction will allow them to progress: land expropriation without compensation and the fast-tracking of a potentially financially ruinous National Health Insurance.
As former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas said at this week’s launch of his book After Dawn, while CR knows what has to be done and the present “dilly-dallying” is not sustainable, the extent of a well-funded fightback against the reformists has been underestimated.