JUSTICE MALALA | Cyril is playing the patience game, and we just have to go along

South Africans are, quite correctly, impatient. They want things to happen quickly. They want change now.

When Ace Magashule is hauled before court on multiple charges of corruption, we expect him and want him to step down from his positions. Now.

Life is not like that. In our very real lives Magashule fights back with every sinew in his body. Jacob Zuma, instead of pitching up at the Zondo commission, shows it the finger. He does not arrive dutifully like the rest of us would. He fights, and fights, and fights again. And then gets told by the Constitutional Court to pick his own punishment.

The path to fixing our country, under the current administration anyway, will be slow. Our systems and processes are slow. The governing party’s processes are slow. Change takes decades.

President Cyril Ramaphosa recognised this difficult path back in the 1990s. He left the ANC secretary-general’s position and went into business to make his fortune, but he stayed on the national executive committee, slowly making his voice heard while keeping his eye on the top job. In the late 2000s, after Thabo Mbeki was ousted from office, many of his comrades walked out and gave tacit or open approval to those who formed the Congress of the People (Cope). Others stood up and excoriated Zuma and his cronies. Ramaphosa stayed, biding his time.

There is no doubt that the Zuma/Magashule faction of the party suffered a bloody nose at the last, sometimes shambolic, NEC meeting.

Ramaphosa knew he couldn’t defeat Zuma in 2012. So he joined him as his deputy president in the party, while keeping just enough distance between them to be able to wash his hands of the nine lost years. When he finally ascended to the presidency in 2017, he gently pushed Zuma out of power. Then, slowly, he started rebuilding the institutions — and is still doing so.

At the last ANC NEC meeting, when Magashule asked for a 30-day grace period to consult before he steps down in line with the ANC’s directive, Ramaphosa happily obliged.

What does this pace tell us? It says Ramaphosa is a man who is looking at a 10-year stay in office. He knows we are in trouble, but he also acknowledges that his reforms will take time to implement. He is taking the time. For Ramaphosa this is a war, not a battle.

The idea of time is an interesting one in assessing Ramaphosa. Many of us are frustrated with his achievements — or lack of — over the past three years. But what if the time frames we impose on him are not what he measures himself by?

Granted, many of us did not pluck these time frames out of the ether. In his numerous state of the nation speeches Ramaphosa has pledged to do one thing or another within a few months, a year or some other time frame. He has missed his own targets.

Yet there is no doubt that the Zuma/Magashule faction of the party suffered a bloody nose at the last, sometimes shambolic, NEC meeting.

The radical economic transformation faction is now on the ropes and it is unlikely to recover. They will fight, of course. Oh, how they will fight. They have no other option. You can’t steal from South Africans unless you steal the ANC first. Then you dismantle the institutions that keep our government afloat and threaten the corrupt.

Yet they are clearly headed for a loss as the pincers of ANC regulations, law enforcement, public outrage and state laws force them out. Ramaphosa has outwitted them.

What it all means is this: Ramaphosa no longer has a lot of time in this first term to implement much of his promised reform agenda. This year he has to fight what will be a bruising local government election in the shadow of Covid-19’s devastation of the economy. In 2024 he has to fight a national election.

So he is fixing on 10 years in power. It is frustrating to watch, but we now know that this is the man we are dealing with and this is how he operates. He lay in wait for Zuma for years. He is taking years to dislodge him and his cronies. And he will take years to implement his reform agenda.

How long does a revolution take? And how long does it take to correct the path of a nation that has lost its way? Ramaphosa’s method argues that it takes a decade to bring about real change. By his actions, that’s how long he expects to be in office — and how long he expects to see his agenda to conclusion.

The question is whether the suffering masses still have the patience to give the ANC another eight or so years in power. Ramaphosa has read the masses and their patience correctly many times before. Don’t rush to say he is wrong this time.