JUSTICE MALALA | Reticent Ramaphosa would rather shuffle his feet than reshuffle cabinet

There is now a sustained drag, a heaviness and rudderlessness, to our country. Many citizens are losing hope in government’s ability to turn this ship around. It is not the first time that SA has gone through a period of despondency, of course. This latest cycle is nonetheless debilitating because it comes on the back of great hope for renewal and rebuilding after the state capture years.

It is not that Eskom is broken and homes now only have electricity for half the day. It is that the sheer depth of criminality at that entity has defeated law enforcement agencies to such an extent that Eskom will now possibly live on as an entity run by gangsters who may include two cabinet ministers — and the police. It is not that crime is so rampant that no-one expects police to solve even a simple crime, but that the police top brass is now seemingly part of the criminal networks. They are gangsters. And politicians are the gang lords.

So it goes across so many areas of our lives: governance structures have collapsed and corruption and criminality flourishes. Few are jailed. Our children now begin their interaction with officialdom through the driving licensing departments knowing that the entire system is corrupt. There is litter on the streets. The grass is not cut.

It is all the more debilitating because the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, increasingly seems tired, distracted, defeated, indecisive and even fearful of doing his job. He has left the stage, and there is a vacuum. Right now, it would seem the country is run on a part-time basis by minerals and energy minister Gwede Mantashe, while Paul Mashatile, the ANC deputy president, is readying himself in the wings to take over.

Ramaphosa is a huge, gaping, absence as the shenanigans within his party unfold. Even worse, there is no-one in the governing party or government to coherently explain what is really going on. The president is generally either silent or, we now learn, flogging animals on his farm. His team, having run out of excuses for the man’s inaction, are perpetually trying to second guess him and then having to mop up after he hasn’t delivered.

He hides in his office, hardly ever gives interviews and sends out a missive of platitudes every Monday. The promises he has made do not get interrogated by the press for progress or completion.

It feels like the Soviet Union of the 1970s. Except for an overwhelming sense of decay, nothing is what it seems. Nothing is spoken explicitly. When words spew forth from officialdom, what is said and what is done are totally at odds with each other. Every day, one searches for clues about who is in the inner circle and who is not, who will lose their job and who will be elevated. Whether a policy resolution is for show or will be implemented. There is no clarity about anything.

Ramaphosa simply does not communicate. He is the chief spokesperson of the government — and he is not present when the lights go out, when the ANC threatens whistle-blowers, when ministers squabble in public, even when the most incompetent of his cabinet members dissemble and break the law.

He hides in his office, hardly ever gives interviews,and sends out a missive of platitudes every Monday. The promises he has made do not get interrogated by the press for progress or completion. Even Jacob Zuma was more available for press scrutiny.

What a waste. Three months ago, Ramaphosa’s presidency seemed faced with a nightmare when the parliamentary panel’s report into the Phala Phala theft opened him up to impeachment proceedings. He managed to swat that aside through deft political support-building within the ANC. Then he won the ANC presidency. That remarkable comeback was supposed to give him a chance to consolidate and finally implement his vision with vigour. Since December Ramaphosa has sat on his hands, leaving the nation leaderless and rudderless. Instead of decisive actions on Eskom, he has gone off to appoint an electricity minister who will be yet another useless cook among the many who are already loitering unused in the Eskom kitchen.

If Ramaphosa was serious about the state of South Africa, he would have acted immediately after the ANC conference to reshuffle his cabinet. More than two months later, he behaves like a man who is apologetic about the hard things a president must do. Lindiwe Sisulu and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma must be laughing as they watch the man standing, petrified, while they insult and undermine him — and get paid millions of rand plus support staff and perks for it.

If Ramaphosa no longer has the desire to lead he should say so. There would be no shame in it. Many of us know he has been the victim of the most egregious attempts at taking him out and stopping his reforms (the few that have been implemented). That, however, is no excuse for sitting around weeping into your soup and doing nothing while the country collapses around you.

Ramaphosa must govern or he must clear out. His silence and long leave from decision-making is hurting the country.