Ramaphosa ‘can’t pretend to be a pure balloon that floated above all this ANC dirt’, says John Steenhuisen

“It is disingenuous in the extreme for President Cyril Ramaphosa to pretend to be a pure as the driven snow balloon that floated above all this ANC dirt that has emerged.”

This is what DA leader John Steenhuisen had to say on why Ramaphosa should appear at the state capture inquiry.

Steenhuisen was speaking on the DA’s webcast hosted by the party’s national spokesperson, Siviwe Gwarube.

He said Ramaphosa must account not only for his role but also for the ANC’s alleged role in plunging SA deep into crisis.

“He must be held accountable because President Ramaphosa was for many years the chairperson of the ANC's cadre deployment committee and had been responsible for a lot of the people who have gone on to serve on state-owned enterprise boards like [former SABC COO] Hlaudi Motsoeneng,” said Steenhuisen.

“All of them would go through that deployment committee Ramaphosa sits on, so it's not good enough for him to simply say he is shocked. He's got to step up to the plate and take some accountability.”

Steenhuisen said another reason for Ramaphosa to appear at the inquiry is that he and former president Jacob Zuma were “joined at the hip” and working together.

“He was close to Zuma over those years. He was the deputy president. They were like Rolls and Royce, Mills and Boon, and K-Ci & JoJo. They were joined at the hip”. 

Earlier this week, lawyers representing the DA submitted questions to the inquiry to be posed to Ramaphosa.

The questions posed include why the ANC has a cadre deployment committee and if Ramaphosa was aware that no other political party has “ever enjoyed the privilege of informing a selection process they wanted one of their members appointed to a particular position in the public sector”.  

“There are only two ways out of this predicament: either the ANC jettisons its policy of cadre deployment, or citizens jettison the ANC,” said the party.

“Forcing Ramaphosa to answer these questions at the state capture inquiry will expedite the solution, one way or another.”