Racism is entrenched in Ramaphosa’s ANC

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s startling racism is laid bare in a 15 August X. Regrettably the context is misleading.

Ramaphosa’s words are presented as a response to Elon Musk, who wanted to know why the South African president was doing nothing about Julius Malema’s recent “Kill the boer” chant at a recent mass rally.

“Why do you say nothing?” asked SA-born multibillionaire Musk.

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After some deft editing, in the X TikTok video Ramaphosa appears to answer by saying: “I fail to find out what the question is because, quite frankly, I thought that he wanted me to answer a question, and I thought I would ask him some interesting questions myself.

“What did he do when the apartheid regime was slaughtering our people? That is a question I would ask because, as I check, he is white, and being white means that he is one of those who supported the apartheid regime.”

Although Ramaphosa did utter those words, he was not responding to Musk at all. It’s an old video. The questioner, seen waving a document in the background, was MP Ian Ollis, who left parliament in 2018, to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He now has a top job in the US.

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Another giveaway is that the footage is obviously filmed in the National Assembly chamber, which has not been in use for a while, having been gutted in a January 2022 fire. I contacted Ollis in the US. In the filmed incident, Ollis had asked Ramaphosa about strike violence.

At the end of question time on the same afternoon, Ramaphosa apologised, according to Ollis. Yet that apology was not published and certainly not then tweeted. Ramaphosa’s words should have received wider publicity at the time. We could have been spared wasted years of Ramaphoria.

By saying that all white people are axiomatically guilty of supporting apartheid, he shed any pretence of nonracialism. We shouldn’t be surprised. This is the guy who defended cadre deployment at the Zondo commission hearings.

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As far back as 1998, he was named chief commissioner of the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) Commission. The cause has served him well. A BEE billionaire, he is seeking to further entrench racial differentiation. In the latest example, his party is using regulations under the Employment Equity Act to tighten racial quotas in the workplace.

Racism is entrenched in Ramaphosa’s ANC, whose leaders feel no qualms about spewing their bile.

Last week, Gauteng human settlements MEC Lebogang Maile of the ANC responded to a journalist’s questions by calling him a “stupid, racist white man”.

No repercussions, no worries, that’s how the ANC rolls. When the party leader sets the tone by saying all whites supported apartheid and the slaughter of “our people”, who can discipline others who stray from the nonracialism the ANC purports to uphold?

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The lesson which many still must absorb is that there is no separation between Ramaphosa and the ANC. There is no “good Cyril, bad ANC”.

They are one and the same. He is as racist and rotten as the rest. Roll on 2024, when we’ll have our best chance of voting them out.