South Africa’s Vice-President, Cyril Ramaphosa, was elected leader of the ruling African National Congress this week. It happened during the latest elective congress of the party. Earlier, I had been agitated about Ramaphosa’s fate. That was because a few months to the election, the opponent drafted to contest against him was the alleged candidate of President Jacob Zuma – Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, his former wife and the immediate past Chairperson of the African Union Commission. I was relieved that Ramaphosa won. Why?
The last time I commented on Ramaphosa was at the time Nigeria’s Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo met with him in South Africa. I liked that fact because I thought a good bond was already being formed between Nigeria and South Africa’s future president. I shall not hesitate to tag myself Ramaphosa’s foremost well-wisher in Nigeria, or anywhere outside South Africa. I had also stated on another occasion on this page that I was looking forward to the time this gentleman would become the president of South Africa. I noted that I had never seen Ramaphosa in person as I had South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, but Ramaphosa is the South African leader that I like most. He is one of those people that one admires and hero-worships while watching them from afar. I had equally stated that I was looking forward to the time Ramaphosa would be inaugurated as president and that time I would make a request to interview him. I’m still bent on that mission. So, the reader could imagine the tension that I experienced when Zuma’s former wife entered the race for the ANC leadership which was the automatic ticket to be the candidate of the ANC in the 2019 presidential election. Why should I be concerned about Ramaphosa emerging as the next president of South Africa?
I’ve always maintained that if our continent will go in any positive direction, Nigeria and South Africa are vital. I shall leave Nigeria alone for now, and focus on South Africa. I hadn’t been pleased with the reports coming out of South Africa in the last few years. Why should I care? It’s for the same reason; South Africans are important to the continent. If they don’t get it right at home, they can’t be of much use to our continent. I suppose what our fellow blacks out there went through under the apartheid rule had made me, like many Nigerians, become sympathetic, alert to whatever happened in South Africa. Once, when E.TV (a South Africa-based TV station) stopped featuring news about South Africa at a set time, I had written to the station to complain that they denied me news of happenings in South Africa. There’s no other country on the continent that I care that much about.
My concern for South Africa’s well-being began in the era when the Nigerian government punctiliously informed us about what we were doing to help bring down the white apartheid government. This concern continues because, in a way, many Nigerians feel closer to South Africans than they do other Africans. I think Nigerian government officials realise this considering the manner they carefully approach what they have tagged ‘special relationship’ with South Africa. Military officials of both nations feel at ease with one another. Never mind the altercations that come up from time to time; Nigerians generally see South Africans as brothers, except when Super Eagles do battle with Bafana Bafana.
Back to the matter of Ramaphosa’s emergence as the leader of the ANC, and his expected emergence as South Africa’s next president. First, who is Ramaphosa? He was born in Soweto, Johannesburg, on November 17, 1952. In 1971, he matriculated from High School and subsequently registered to study law at the University of the North (Turfloop) in 1972. While at the university, Ramaphosa became involved in student politics. As a result, he got detained in solitary confinement by the apartheid government for 11 months in 1974 under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act. In 1976, he was detained again, following the popular unrest in Soweto. After his release, he became a law clerk for a Johannesburg firm of attorneys and continued with his articles through correspondence with the University of South Africa from where he obtained his Degree in 1981. Ramaphosa joined the National Council of Trade Unions as a legal advisor. In 1982, CUSA requested that Ramaphosa start a union for mineworkers; this new union was launched in the same year and was named the National Union of Mineworkers.
Ramaphosa became NUM’s first secretary. He was the conference organiser in the preparations leading to the formation of the Congress of South African Trade Union. Ramaphosa was elected as the first General Secretary of COSATU, a position he held until he resigned in June 1991. Under his leadership, union membership grew from 6,000 to 300,000 by 1992, giving COSATU control of nearly half of the total black workforce in the South African mining industry. He also led the mineworkers in one of the biggest strikes ever in South African history. Ramaphosa served as chairman of the National Reception committee which co-ordinated arrangements for the release of Nelson Mandela and the subsequent welcome rallies within South Africa. He was also a member of the International Mandela Reception Committee. He was elected General-Secretary of the ANC at a conference held in Durban in July 1991. Ramaphosa became a visiting Professor of Law at Stanford University, USA, in October 1991.
Ramaphosa became Deputy President of the ANC at the 2012 elective conference and since then, there had been speculation that he would run for the President of the ANC in 2017, and succeed Jacob Zuma as South Africa’s president in 2019. He was appointed Deputy President by Zuma in May 2014. Following his appointment, he was made Leader of Government Business in the National Assembly. In June 2014, Zuma announced that Ramaphosa would be appointed as Chairman of the National Planning Commission. I had been clapping in this part of continent since 2012. I had clapped more in 2014, and this week when it became clear that Ramaphosa was in a position to emerge as South Africa’s next president I had clapped even more.
Why is Ramaphosa important come in 2019? The domestic condition is one; so there’s a need to have an experienced person who enjoys the trust of domestic and external actors. There’s also the continent that gains when there’s a capable hand in South Africa, as well as Nigeria that needs someone like Ramaphosa to work with in providing leadership for the continent. I feel Ramaphosa will be able to work with Nigerian leaders (more so as Abuja has demonstrated that it will no longer tolerate nonsense as the case in The Gambia saga indicates). I also feel Ramaphosa will effectively combine his role at home with providing leadership outside. This is a man that can multitask. He is a strategist, highly cerebral, a founder and pioneer leader of large and influential organisations. More pointedly, he was once at the centre of the complex negotiations that brought an end to the white minority apartheid government, an event I had keenly followed as it unravelled in the early 1990s.
It was actually in the course of those negotiations that Ramaphosa came to my attention for the first time. As a union leader, he was much admired by many, not least by Mandela who mentioned him several times in his book, Long Walk To Freedom. Ramaphosa wasn’t just a leader of trade unions, following the negotiations he had returned to business and made big success of it in the years that Mandela and later, Thambo Mbeki, were in power. The situation in South Africa at this time calls for a man such as Ramaphosa in the post-Zuma years. There’s a need to have a person who can re-organise the ANC ahead of 2019. For trust in the party, and morale among the ANC members is low. The party is divided as Zuma pointed out during the congress. An experienced party member who knows all the structures and is respected by many is what it will take to reinvigorate the ANC and restore people’s trust in government. In addition, Ramaphosa will be the ideal person to restore investors’ confidence in South Africa and turn around the significant business and economic indicators have nosedived at this time.
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