Relative performances of ANC and DA will determine the shape of SA

Both the ANC and the DA face a nerve-wracking countdown to the 2024 general election. To resort to a cricketing analogy, both leaders are trying to play it safe and see out the clock without making any major errors that would gift the advantage to their opponents.

Based on personality traits, Cyril Ramaphosa might, on the face of it, be a good bet. Where John Steenhuisen is mercurial, Ramaphosa is imperturbable.

He’s by instinct a prodder and plodder, a man difficult to dislodge. He’s at his best occupying the crease and endlessly nudging the ball back to the bowler, rather than actually trying to probe the field and seek the boundary.

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But given the predicament that we are in, this is not the style of play that SA needs. The country needs a captain with some steel and verve, neither of which Ramaphosa has.

Last week, he declared a national state of disaster (SOD) to deal with an Eskom crisis that he told parliament was “an existential threat”. To emphasise the urgency, in a dramatic gesture the SOD was “gazetted to begin with immediate effect”.

But this is a problem that has been his direct responsibility for at least eight years, first as deputy-president, when he was in 2014 appointed by Jacob Zuma to run the so-called “Eskom war room”. Then, since 2018, as president, giving repeated assurances that his administration had the problem in hand.

However, far from helping, his administration has been actively obstructive. Whether it’s been additional funds for fuel to run the backup gas turbines, a licence allowing Eskom to cut out the middle-man in buying diesel, or an exemption to race quotas on hiring specialised engineers, Ramaphosa has said no.

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The SOD is all about moulding voter perceptions in the run-up to the 2024 general election, rather than Ramaphosa actually needing the draconian powers available under the Act.

To start with, none of the ministerial underpinnings to run SOD has yet been put in place. The Cabinet reshuffle still hasn’t happened because Ramaphosa has been doing what he does best, dithering under the guise of consulting his pals about who to put in the team.

In short, Ramaphosa is a useless president, the least-bad among miserable options. No wonder the voters stay away in droves. Even the old-school ANC reformists who’ve punted Ramaphosa for the past few years are losing steam.

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So, faced with such a cack-handed nightwatchman batsman as Ramaphosa, one might think that the DA should be feeling pretty confident.

Unlike the ANC, they have an enviable record of achievement in every council or province that they have governed. And Steenhuisen, after all, is a confident player. Lots of flash and dash, unlike Ramaphosa.

The problem, however, is the long history of DA collapses because of its leaders’ propensity to hit their own wickets. During Sona, Steenhuisen managed it twice.

First, he challenged the speaker over the ejection of the EFF MPs. Then, he staged his own bit of look-at-me drama by declaring that already while the president was speaking, the DA has set in motion a legal challenge to the SOD.

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Predictably, the DA was skewered by the ANC and other opposition parties for now attacking the president for something that the DA had, starting in early 2022, repeatedly urged him to do.

Forget all the noise about the important role of the smaller parties. No matter what political accommodations happen afterwards, it is the relative performances of two parties – the ANC and the DA – that will determine the shape of SA as it enters its fourth decade of democracy. Both captains will have to up their game.