Cyril Ramaphosa has come in for a lot of stick over the years, but that’s all about to stop as he reveals to South Africa and the world that he has found an astonishing and possibly supernatural way to end crime, corruption and maladministration simply by being near it.
This miracle, which I will describe shortly, will be especially good news for the beleaguered South African Police Service, whose officers will now be able to focus on the really important stuff, like making Tshwane look like a failed state.
Certainly, that seemed to be the whole point on Thursday, as the mayor of Tshwane, ActionSA’s Nasiphi Moya, arrived to deliver her state of the capital city address in a parade that was straight out of the sort of place run by a junta of colonels in aviator shades.
To be fair, the video, posted on the city’s official X account, starts quite well, with four officers on horseback giving it a pleasantly rustic feel, like the opening of an agricultural fair; but when 10 cops on motorbikes wobble through the frame like a small squad of Checkers Sixty60 riders who’ve all come to the wrong address but can’t get reception to find their way back, it all goes to hell fairly quickly. Next is a dismal little crawl-past of Tshwane metro police department patrol cars, three ultra-luxurious BMWs, some fire and rescue vehicles, three more police Sixty60 riders, and then, just to underline the failed state vibes, a SAPS Casspir bringing up the rear.
Visible policing reducing crime? Was this what Newton felt when saw the apple fall, or when Oppenheimer split the atom? Had Ramaphosa just surpassed Einstein’s E=MC2 with his own astonishing equation?
In case none of that was depressing enough, the person running the X account rounded off the whole thing with a comment that said it all, excitedly announcing that “The ‘BOSS LADY’ @nasiphim has arrived!” Because nothing says that you understand constitutional democracy and public service like referring to the mayor of a coalition government as BOSS LADY.
But I digress.
The point is that, thanks to Ramaphosa, police officials could be weeks or even days away from pivoting into the parade business full-time.
The stunning announcement came on Tuesday, as Ramaphosa told a policing summit that he had “visited Johannesburg one evening”, presumably coming down from Asgard in the form of a horse or an otter, and had spent some time with the Johannesburg metro police.
During this visit, he revealed, he had “realised” something, namely, that “in order to have safe cities ... we do need a presence of the police to deter criminality”.
One can only imagine the cries of alarm and awe that rang through that gathering as veteran police officers felt their minds expand and then crack under the weight of that genius. Visible policing reducing crime? Was this what Newton felt when saw the apple fall, or when Oppenheimer split the atom? Had Ramaphosa just surpassed Einstein’s E=MC2 with his own astonishing equation?
But even as those questions resounded, Ramaphosa was moving on, revealing that even the presence of police might no longer be needed.
“It was quite late at night,” continued the president, “and I found no criminal activity because JMPD was in place, they were visible, they were there”.
Now, at first glance it doesn’t seem exceptional that Ramaphosa found no criminal activity: that, after all, is how you get to the top of the ANC and stay there.
But look at the bigger picture for a moment, and recall how often the president hasn’t found anything to be going wrong. Think of all those times he was shocked or surprised or disappointed by some dysfunction or disaster that the rest of us had known about for months or years or decades. Think of this man, endlessly upset by encountering bad things he apparently hadn’t known about, and then ask yourself: what if he’s not pretending or deflecting?
What if something miraculous and era-defining is taking place, namely, that bad things simply don’t happen around Cyril Ramaphosa?
Of course, some might argue that there’s nothing supernatural happening here, and that, as a billionaire and an ANC leader, Ramaphosa is merely insulated from reality by a doubly impenetrable layer of non-accountability. When he expresses shock at seeing a power utility crumble or a city like Johannesburg collapse, it is because he has long ago left behind his trade-unionist life and now lives in a world of private jets and red carpets and champagne on tap — and that’s just when he goes to the loo.
As for his midnight jaunt with the JMPD, well, that too is easily explained by his critics: the reason he didn’t see any crime that night was because police officials want to keep their jobs and had put enough cops on the streets that night to invade and occupy Lesotho.
But what if those critics are wrong? What if we have stumbled onto something magical, some power that Ramaphosa has that allows him to simply evaporate the effects of corruption or maladministration or economic decline; some innate ability to make bad things disappear behind curtains or under carpets or through shredders simply by being near them? And what if we could harness that power for the greater good?
Didn’t Ramaphosa himself want a bullet train built in South Africa? Well, there you go! Surely we have the technological know-how to strap him into some sort of high-speed tube and whizz him round and round the country in an endless loop, like Snowpiercer but with less snow and only one unreachable billionaire on board, spreading his See-No-Evil, Hear-No-Evil miracle wherever he goes?
Granted, he won’t be around to be president. But how’s that different to now?
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