PETER BRUCE | Tolashe falls but Cyril’s problems grow

President Cyril Ramaphosa finally found the courage to fire his wayward social development minister, Sisisi Tolashe.

This after a flurry of reports nailed her for privately using cars donated to the ANC Women’s League, which she leads; allowing her daughter to claim half the wage paid to a government employee seconded to her as a domestic helper; and appointing as her chief of staff an impossibly young and inexperienced niece of one of the advisers in her office.

Ramaphosa would normally spend months weighing up the risks to himself of upsetting anyone in the ANC leadership for fear of unknown political consequences in some far-flung province — the Eastern Cape in Tolashe’s case — that might unexpectedly come back to bite him as he tries to control the internal battle for the ANC leadership in December 2027.

It’s a hell of a life: tolerating revolting behaviour because what you do now might make more difficult something you want to do in a year’s time. The “long game” his supporters say he plays is merely an elasticated moral stretch designed to keep internal ANC threats away from his desk, despite the obvious clutch of money-grubbers, incompetents and chancers he appoints as ministers.

Lots of people tried to claim credit for forcing Ramaphosa’s hand, but the true hero of the story is, thankfully, a journalist.

Lots of people tried to claim credit for forcing Ramaphosa’s hand, but the true hero of the story is, thankfully, a journalist. Rebecca Davis at Daily Maverick owned this story from the start and shook it all out of Tolashe like a proper newshound. That’s the way to do it. Not everything has to be an “investigation”, but the old rules of checking your facts and making your calls still apply. And if you want the world to like you, journalism is probably not your trade.

Ramaphosa’s job is to stay standing. The wrong successor would ruin his reforms, modest as they may be. Taking on review the 2022 judicial panel report recommending impeachment proceedings over the $580,000 stolen from inside a sofa at his Phala Phala game ranch — now confirmed by the Constitutional Court — is one measure of his determination to see through the election of a suitable successor.

Moreover, his stout defence, again on Friday, of the current BEE model will become more strident. The government has now decided that only companies 100% owned by black South Africans can do deals under R20m with the state. It’s a demented call, perilous for thousands of majority black-owned companies already operating under existing BEE rules alongside white-owned partners.

But the extremes are where Ramaphosa is going to have to live if he is to survive long enough to control his succession. It’ll be tough. The current frontrunner, deputy ANC and deputy state president Paul Mashatile, is owned by the many people who have lent or given him money and is deeply embedded in the Gauteng ANC, a potent Ramaphosa rival.

National Assembly speaker Thoko Didiza has clearly done Ramaphosa a huge favour by appointing not a manageable seven but 31 MPs to the impeachment committee ordered by the Constitutional Court

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula is the other formal contender, but it is hard to take him — or his candidacy — seriously.

The most popular non-candidate in opinion polls is Patrice Motsepe, now one of the country’s most powerful businessmen — and Ramaphosa’s brother-in-law. But, not for want of trying, I have yet to speak to anyone close to Motsepe who thinks he is interested in the job. Or, for that matter, that he and Ramaphosa are especially close, despite their familial relationship.

And Motsepe, anyway, lacks the one thing vital to winning the ANC leadership: he does not have a faction in the party. He could buy one — ANC leaders and MPs, if nothing else, are always for sale — and a nascent PM27 fundraising effort already exists. It would do much the same as the CR17 fund did for Ramaphosa back in the day. But if it is to have any success, he would probably have to buy out, or buy into, the Mbalula faction and make some kind of deal with Mbalula himself.

The next 18 months are going to be wild. Ramaphosa has a decent technical defence if he can persuade the Western Cape High Court to hear his review. The panel report was weak, and, instead of finding “sufficient evidence” of Ramaphosa’s supposed corruption and criminality, as required by the rules of the National Assembly, it found only “prima facie” evidence. And if the high court turns Ramaphosa down, he’ll go to the Supreme Court of Appeal. And if he wins, then the EFF will appeal.

It will all drag on long enough to confuse and possibly halt any formal impeachment hearing in parliament. As it is, National Assembly speaker Thoko Didiza has clearly done Ramaphosa a huge favour by appointing not a manageable seven but 31 MPs to the impeachment committee ordered by the Constitutional Court.

It’s a guaranteed bunfight if it ever sits. MPs will fight with each other and with the many witnesses — including the Reserve Bank and the South African Revenue Service, whose own Phala Phala investigations cleared the president. It’ll take forever. Perfect for Cyril.