In his rendition at the Unleashing Leadership Potential event two years ago, ANC stalwart and one of South Africa's thinkers, Joel Netshitenzhe, opined that “leaders have a good sense of moments in history and how to use them”. The sixth administration has landed on President Cyril Ramaphosa two moments in which history will record him as being able to have seized and used.
First, history called on him to confront corruption and state capture. By characterising his organisation as “accused number one in the dock”, he seized the strategic initiative to make South Africa's foremost nexus of politics, the ANC, the force through which corruption could be fought. The resultant member integrity management system, which is now being considered for adoption in handling same among the public service SMS, is an innovation that might be RSA's contribution to human civilisation. Adopting a regulatory framework to make it illegal for a company not to report corruption has drawn in the “corruptor” complex as “accused number two in the dock”.
Second, history has called on his presidency to complete the Nelson Mandela edict that “our liberation is incomplete without the liberation of Palestine”. Taking the plight of the people of Gaza to the International Court of Justice did not only disable the immoral use of the Security Council veto power even in instances where a clear case of genocide is visible, but elevated the importance of global justice against apartheid wherever it still exists in the world. The truth is that the occupation of Palestine, the genocidal acts of the Israeli government in Gaza, and peace in the Middle East have now occupied centre stage in global politics.
What Ramaphosa is headed for in history might redefine global trade and commerce. The weaponisation of the currency reserve status of the US dollar conjures a different reality. In the next term Ramaphosa will choose between RSA's national interest and the bullying demands of US national interests. With the yuan of China now at a reported 42% of currency trades in Russia and its general trades having reached $385bn in 2023, it is a matter of time before the continued status of the US dollar as a global reserve asset will experience an unprecedented trust test and deficit.
With a 50%-plus mandate now looming, Ramaphosa can take South Africa out of the subtle economic sanctions regime the US bill on South Africa is engineering to respond to the impact of SA's soft and ideological power displayed within Brics and, lately, the ICJ. The global increase in the acquisition of gold and a move towards digital assets, as a way to mitigate the economic fragility risks posed by a weaponised US dollar, will impose a historic moment for the leadership of Ramaphosa to make a trading currency decision and lead Africa. The extended Brics membership has brought into the fold the capacity to trade energy through a Brics-preferred currency, and the return of the gold standard will, if Ramaphosa seizes the moment, restore Africa's gold reserves in the global trade architecture.
Ideologically, this strategic assignment to redefine the African continent regarding global trade and the possibility of creating the biggest mineral bank to undergird a continental currency to facilitate intra-continental trade can only be executed by a sufficiently mandated Ramaphosa presidency. The anti-ANC posture of the opposition complex and their silence on the geostrategic importance of muscling SA's geopolitical rights as a sovereign state renders them risky to SA's national interests and sovereignty. The notion that the liberal order can work only through US and Western hegemony is what the salient thrust of the US Bill on South Africa is all about. In the global South, SA has been able to structure strategic ideological frameworks that have constantly disabled the US's hard power foreign relations posture.
The conclusion of the Brics trading currency is expected to dominate its next summit in Russia. Notwithstanding that we are in the middle of consequential elections, the subject of Brics requires a national discourse which should send a message to the dollar. The international trade switching politics and the power of SWIFT, which have been flagged at the latest Brics summit, would have had a solution devised, given the ease at which China is clearing its international payments system outside SWIFT.
In the exact rendition, Netshitenzhe quotes Italian poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri when he said, “Death to our life, life to our death”. This was cautioning that in such moments where leadership is challenged, those who lead must balance how a decision to bring death to a particular life can be a decision also to bring life to our death. The US Bill of South Africa will, if adopted in its current form, bring death to our economic life, and yet a Ramaphosa call on the trading currency issues might bring life to our impending death. This should, to Ramaphosa, be a clear message that “sabela u ya bizwa”.
* Mathebula is the founder of The Thinc Foundation
