We, the people, want to see heads roll

11 February 2018 - 00:00 By peter bruce

You have to feel a bit for Cyril Ramaphosa, newly elected president of the ANC and soon to be president of the country as well. When Thabo Mbeki lost the party presidency to Jacob Zuma at Polokwane in 2007, it took Zuma and his allies nearly nine months to recall him from the Union Buildings.
None of that for Ramaphosa. He is supposed to have Zuma out of Mbeki's old job in less than two months. The country is in an uproar because it's taking, you know, forever to get it done. In less than two months!
And it'll take a few more hours, no more, if it doesn't happen today. Zuma is gone. There's nothing he can do to stop it. Cyril is coming. His cabinet is basically sorted. A broad policy stance is in place (Ramaphosa led the creation of the National Development Plan).
The budget on February 22 is basically written. Lists of the new boards of a slew of state-owned companies are ready and people whose names are on them have been spoken to and are on board.In a way it's all just detail. Fix what's obviously wrong. Replace the national director of public prosecutions and the commissioner of the South African Revenue Service with professionals and get back the good people who've left the Treasury. About 10 top appointments later in the intelligence services, police and a new, slimmed-down and capable cabinet, and you're done.
I don't mean everything is suddenly rosy, but from Ramaphosa's point of view this stuff is not the big job. The big job is bringing the ratings agencies round to a more positive point of view on South Africa, winning the elections with a decisive majority next year and making sure he is still in the Union Buildings in December 2023, a year after the next ANC elective conference.
There are about a gajillion things in his way. Winning well next year would help because it would cheer up even his critics in the party and keep it united. He will face constant pressure from the EFF on the land issue particularly, but it should be relatively easy to find a reasonable way to do what obviously has to be done. Land distribution in this country is a disgrace and it has to change.
The left generally, the EFF, the unions and the communists, will constantly tug at him. He can do some left-wing things but he has to keep the economy upright and growing, and that will take time.
Fortunately, I have found a way to buy him that time - to win him the election next year. I don't have any direct access to him (OK, I've got his phone number but I'd never ever use it) but I know he reads the Sunday Times, so this is the right place to tell him.What you have to do, Cyril, is appoint an NDPP who will prosecute the moer out of all the thugs that have been stealing from the state for the past decade. Think of it as our version of The Hunger Games, where an entire population is in front of their TV sets each night to see who is going to be arrested next.
Get the cops to create what the Americans call a "perp walk" where the arrested person is handcuffed and walked by a policeman or -woman holding his or her arm from their home and weeping family into a waiting police car. Between now and the election even a vaguely alert police force could do two a week without emptying the pool.
And a few months before the elections, you pull your rabbit out of your hat. You announce that you have requested Interpol to put out a Red Notice for any one of Atul, Ajay or Tony Gupta. It means they are to be arrested the moment they cross an international border. Following investigations by your police, they are wanted on charges of fraud, theft, racketeering and harassment in South Africa.
You release, weekly, a report on their current location (this last week their jet, ZS-OAK, was tracked heading to St Petersburg in Russia) and you create a generous budget for the Government Communication and Information System to procure photographs of the brothers and their families wherever they may be. The photos are regularly made available to the South African media. The Guptas have no right to privacy. Trust me, I know that for sure.
A loud and public war on corruption, waged daily on the ground and in the media, would get you through the election, Cyril, and well beyond.
Barack Obama got a second term out of executing Osama bin Laden. The Guptas are your get-out-of-jail card.
Use it well...

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