Rama-drama just part of a perpetual crisis

Observing the current news landscape one feels a familiar SA sense of crisis. If it’s not something overtly political, such as the rollercoaster the president has been on over the past few days, it can be something politically adjacent, such as the assault on Durban last year, or a climaterelated crisis, or perhaps just some “decent, honest crime”.

In these scenarios we focus in detail on our way out of the crisis. At times of high anxiety we do what we can to be safe. We also do what we can to feel safe, a different psychological exercise that leads us to find comfort in strange places.

Living in SA is at times like competing in one of those reality shows where people are dumped in a remote place.

Now we are collectively in the desert and in search of fuel, shelter and water, and are focused on finding a place where we might survive the night. We don’t really have time to consider the circumstances that led us here.

In Durban last year we fretted about the human cost of the riots, the disintegration of the social fabric and the absence of the police. We just wanted it to stop. During stage 6 loadshedding we saw relief in stage 4 and reminisced about the sunny uplands of stage 2. When we are robbed, we say how lucky we were that we were not murdered.

We live in a giant false dichotomy that forces us to accept what is unacceptable because we are led to believe the only alternative is worse. Now we just want somebody running the country who is not a gangster, and so for many people that manifests as relief that President Cyril Ramaphosa has decided to fight on. How can this be healthy?

Over the coming two weeks we will focus in detail on the travails of the president.

Typing this on Sunday morning, it seems Business Day got it right on Thursday, and that he will take former chief justice Sandile Ngcobo’s report on review on the basis of advice from lawyers that the report

Certainly, is wrong in the law, president wrong’in s key fact, and blunders out of its scope. supporters in the commentariat are out and about punting this line.

To take the report on review is his right, but this is also not really the point. It is a mistake to think Ramaphosa’s predicament is the crisis. It is not. It is another symptom of our crisis-in-perpetuity; our crushed expectations and a dearth of leadership in all political parties that can appeal to a society that is not cohesive, and is unequal, mistrustful and vulnerable.

A recent poll of a representative sample of 3,200 registered ANC voters, a small but statistically sound survey conducted by the Social Research Foundation before the Phala Phala report was released, found that the ANC’s fortunes are tied strongly to Ramaphosa. This will have been on the minds of the president’s supporters when they were persuading him not to resign at the weekend. Two-thirds believe the president will improve the country, and half say their support for the governing party is tied strongly to Ramaphosa’s leadership, suggesting his departure would have a severe negative effect on the ANC’s electoral prospects in 2024.

Simplistically, this makes sense. Ramaphosa has taken some important strides to undo the worst of the Zuma administration’s sacking of the country’s finances and the destruction of institutions. Where he has had the political room, he has made progress. And yet he has never had full control of the ANC, and that has been especially visible at Eskom, which is under attack from criminal syndicates tied to senior individuals in the party.

That the ANC’s electoral fortunes are tied to this middling level of achievement speaks of a defeated and frightened electorate. How can our options be Ramaphosa or complete chaos? How can the opposition be so weak?

To some extent it’ sa universal curse; Britons were faced with a choice between

Boris Johnson or racist, new-left bedlam. Americans were faced with a choice between a bright-orange narcissistic conspiracist and Hillary Clinton. This is not exactly an embarrassment of riches.

There is another way that does include airing pretty lowstatus opinions that seem naive, but here goes anyway. Can we impress on the governing party that over the coming fortnight it has one last shot at proving it can reform, and that this will require what has seemed unimaginable: a clean-out of the revolving door of outdated ideologues, dinosaurs, gangsters and preening “royalty” that make up a good deal of the cabinet.

It will require a new way of thinking about how to run a country that involves actually worrying about running the country. In our paroxysm of national anxiety it is not OK that nobody is talking about the economy when we are in such trouble. It is not OK that we are not worrying about the state of our schools, and it is not OK that there is no discussion about the fear women and children, in particular, live under in this country.

This is what actually matters, and it is all that matters. If the ANC can sort out its mess, all well and good. But I care far less about Ramaphosa’s judgment and dithering, or the thugs who want to unseat him, than I do our broader societal problems, and I don’t see a soul at the top of any of the ANC’s lists who seems to be interested in talking about it.

I CARE FAR LESS ABOUT RAMAPHOSA ’ S JUDGMENT AND DITHERING THAN I DO OUR BROADER SOCIETAL PROBLEMS