If there is a silver lining to the dark cloud of Jacob Zuma’s re-election as ANC president it is the prospect of Cyril Ramaphosa playing a more active role in politics.
Without that, a Zuma second term, stretching to 2019 is, in the hackneyed words of former prime minister John Vorster, “too ghastly to contemplate”.
Motlanthe’s withdrawal from the race for the ANC deputy presidency was strategically smart for the “forces for change” because it cleared the way for Ramaphosa. Although Ramaphosa is favoured by many Zuma supporters, he is of a different ilk. There are no allegations against him of corruption or serial philandering. His vast BEE wealth makes it unlikely that he will plunder the public purse in the way that Zuma and company have over the past five years.
Ramaphosa has his enemies. At the start of the Farlam commission of inquiry into the Marikana massacre there was a misdirected attempt to suggest he had blood on his hands because of e-mails between him and various actors. In fact he said nothing untoward.
Now there is every prospect that he could take over as the country’s president in 2014, by which time Zuma will be 72. If, against expectations, Zuma does stay in charge until the ANC’s 2017 elective conference, Ramaphosa will be in pole position to be elected party president.
What irony that will be for his nemesis, Thabo Mbeki. There is already irony in that the three who contested the ANC deputy presidency this week, Ramaphosa, Mathews Phosa and Tokyo Sexwale, were once accused of plotting against Mbeki.
The rest of the ANC’s top six are uninspiring, with little prospect of halting the party’s downward spiral. A century after its formation, the ANC returned to its birthplace to prepare for its own demise.
