President Cyril Ramaphosa has so far done well as a head of state but more needs to be done to restore the integrity of the governing party. That is according to political analyst Somadoda Fikeni as the President marks 100 days in office.
Ramaphosa was inaugurated on January the 15th following his election as ANC president during the party’s elective conference in December 2017.
He took over from former President Jacob Zuma who was under severe pressure to resign from opposition parties and civil society for violating the constitution and having close links to the Gupta family who are accused of corrupt dealings with government entities.
Upon taking over the reins at the Union Building President Ramaphosa hit the ground running first by reshuffling his cabinet.
This saw the exit of some controversial ministers such as Mosebenzi Zwane, David Mahlobo, Faith Mutambi, Lynn Brown and Des van Rooyen.
While most ministers did not support Ramaphosa in the build-up to the ANC national conference political analyst Somadoda Fikeni says the President had to do some balancing act to avoid being seen to be purging his opponents.
“I do think that in his mind two things might have happened, first one, how to answer to a national call for a change in cabinet, which would be quiet significant. And the second one, how to unite the ANC and not seen to be purging the people who did not support you. And he seemed to have tried that balancing act being mindful of the fact that being a supporter of Zuma should not be translated into automatic sense of not being a performer because some of the ministers who served under Zuma who might have supported president Zuma are not necessarily tainted by non-performance.”
President Ramaphosa also moved swiftly to make some changes to key state-owned entities including power utility Eskom and state-owned airline SAA.
These are some of the entities which were rocked by scandals relating to large scale corruption costing tax payers millions of rands.
Fikeni says this was also a commendable move by the president.
“The reasonable logical thing to do was to simply revamp, change leadership because reputation risks of people who are fingered in this or that corruption allegations was never take these entities forward because they are so distressed, they need to borrow money.”
Following his promise of a new era during his State of the Nation-Address, Fikeni says President Ramaphosa will have to do more than just shout slogans like Thuma Mina in order to secure the ANC’s electoral fortunes in next year’s polls.
He says internal problems in the main opposition the Democratic Alliance also present an opportunity for the ANC to regain lost ground.
“Many provinces, the legitimacy of leadership is still in question. In some branches the issue of corruption and gate keeping is still very high; and you still have a huge chunk of leaders in the ANC NEC who still have to answer to the state capture commission which may blemish them. So the ANC has a lot of work to do.”
The removal of former North West premier Supra Mahumapelo also restored public confidence that the governing party remains the centre of power irrespective of what position one holds in the party.
Mahumapelo stepped down following weeks of violent protests against his continued stay in office.
The confidence-building measures include the appointments of a strong, independent economic adviser and several special economic envoys, and the announcement of an ambitious investment target of 100-billion-US dollars.
Two summits, one on jobs and one on investment, are planned. But at the same time investors, ratings agencies and business are looking to structural reforms that can remove existing blockages.
