TOM EATON | Maybe, just maybe, we can now suspend disbelief in Cyril’s new dawn

It was “just a matter of five years” until the Ramaphosa faction could be removed, Ace Magashule told his supporters in 2018. On Wednesday afternoon it turned out he was wrong on both counts: it was three years, and the man being hurried off the stage was Magashule himself.

For some time now the president has been asking us to “watch this space”, a request that has felt increasingly insulting as we continued to watch a space that seemed to contain nothing but hot air, the relentless mediocrity and wastefulness of our ruling cabal, and the slow withering of hope.

Now, however, something else has appeared in the space before us, something large, unprecedented and genuinely remarkable: the suspension of the ANC’s third-most powerful member because of his alleged links to corruption.

“Suspension” is a soft and soggy thing, somewhere between a gentle slap on the wrist and a quiet word in one’s ear. Naughty children are suspended from school for a week, much to their unrepentant delight. Petty criminals get suspended sentences and go and lie on the couch with an electronic ankle bracelet. Hell, most of us have been suspended from Facebook for insulting the wrong oligarch, and it’s made not a jot of difference to our lives.

It’s not just that Ramaphosa has become the first president since 1994 to defenestrate an extremely powerful party member because of alleged links to corruption. It’s that he has potentially taken a very real step towards loosening the monstrously jammed gears of government.

Which is why I understand if many South Africans believe Magashule’s suspension is yet another hand-wringing, kowtowing non-punishment meted out by the consequence-averse ANC.

The “Dear Ace” letter sent to Magashule by the party, however, contained more than a flash of steel and, in the right light, read more like an edict of exile than a suspension.

Magashule’s suspension, for example, will continue “until the final outcome” of his court proceeding, which, if Jacob Zuma’s current shenanigans are any measure, could last for the rest of Magashule’s life.

If it does, it’s going to be a very long, very lonely public silence: according to the terms of the suspension, Magashule will not be allowed to “engage in the mobilisation of ANC structures, any other organisations or individuals, including on your stepping aside and matters related thereto”.

In other words, there will be no rent-a-crowd dancing on courtroom steps; no weekend warriors in rented military uniforms making speeches through megaphones; no get-togethers over tea to foment secession. If Magashule wants to keep earning his fat salary (and the letter confirms that he will) he will have to get in line, smile and nod, and then render himself politically invisible.

Of course, we all know that when the ANC closes a door, it opens a loophole. It’s possible that Magashule will wriggle out of this in a few months.

On the other end of the argument, I’m also not subscribing to the view of many on Twitter that the ANC is finally bending to the will of a gatvol people. Ramaphosa didn’t take out Magashule because he is a champion of good and believed it was the right thing to do. He did it because Magashule is a very senior member of a cabal intent on removing him from office. Only one of them was going to walk away from this standoff in Luthuli Gulch, and Ramaphosa drew quicker and had a bigger shooting iron.

It may yet prove to be a shot heard around the world.

It’s not just that Ramaphosa has become the first president since 1994 to defenestrate an extremely powerful party member because of alleged links to corruption.

It’s that he has potentially taken a very real step towards loosening the monstrously jammed gears of government.

Few SA presidents have produced as much speculation as Ramaphosa, and certainly none have produced more in their first three years in office.

Every week, the pundits (and columnists like me) have asked the same questions again and again. Is he good? Bad? Indifferent? Is he spineless, or just biding his time? Is he in charge, or on the way out?

We’ve had to resort to endless speculation because Ramaphosa hasn’t shown us anything about himself or his presidency beyond the small, shuffling moves of a man whose hands and feet are tied by an RET rope that might also strangle him if he’s not careful.

It’s still a long rope, and tough, with many more knots to pull apart. But by sidelining Magashule, Ramaphosa has made an extraordinary, essential cut that will allow him to untie himself and drag the rope away from his neck.

And the more he unties, and the more RET strands unravel and fall away, the more our questions will be answered as he finally finds the space and the mandate to become the president he wants to be, rather than the president he’s been allowed to be.

It’s early days. This could all still fade away as another false dawn. But there’s a small chance that history will record that the presidency of Cyril Ramaphosa began this week.