Ramaphosa gives us hope

Only the ignorant cannot see that the political winds of change are blowing through South Africa at this time and a fresh atmosphere is beginning to emerge under the baton of Cyril Ramaphosa.

A signal has been sounded marking the beginning of the end of an era of chaos in the form of the post-Polokwane jamboree led by JacobZuma.

His circus has lasted long enough for the clown to be pelted with stones by his unamused audience because they can’t take the joke anymore.

Ramaphosa, the man who could have been president of the ruling ANC and the country far earlier than it actually happened had Nelson Mandela had his way, wasted no time in acting.

Hardly a month after being elected to lead Africa’s biggest liberation movement, the ANC, he has begun to walk the talk.

While wearing a wide smile and full of sweet talk, he is taking on the corrupt Zuma empire – dismantling it brick by brick and stone by stone.

It appears the task at hand and the fight will be sustained as the new ANC leadership get serious about fighting corruption.

This is a process that began with the defeat of Zuma’s nefarious agenda at Nasrec, where the electoral outcomes were not what the man from Nkandla wished for as new president emerged other than the one he annointed.

As the rest of the ANC leadership was elected on the basis of unity in action, it became clear that delegates, including many of his staunch supporters, had had enough of Zuma and his associates.

Now eyes are on Ramaphosa – who has become the hope for all patriotic South Africans who yearn for a messiah to save the country from corrupt gangsters who dominated the stage under Zuma’s leadership.

Even before he took over the reins as ANC president, Ramaphosa had begun to act like one.

Relying heavily on his newly acquired power, he acted to appoint a new board for the beleaguered power utility Eskom.

Under his direction, the board must remove all executives involved in the state capture at the state-owned entity and hire a permanent CEO and chief financial officer to stabilise the enterprise.

As if this was not enough in a single weekend, with Ramaphosa’s influence, we saw the NPA and the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) moving to attach the corruption-prone dairy project at Vrede in the Free State, where more than R200 million of taxpayers’ money was siphoned out by the Guptas and politicians aligned to Zuma.

Again, the AFU was preparing to freeze assets of companies that stole money from Eskom in favour of the Guptas.

Now that the wheel has begun to grind, with Ramaphosa leading the charge, South Africans would hope that the winds of change would blow in the direction of the National Assembly.

Since 1994, our parliament had become the weakest link in our democratic dispensation. While the judiciary has proved many times that it is up to the task in dealing with executive failures, the ANC-dominated parliament has, often deliberately, failed to hold executives to account over corruption. Now, with Ramaphosa at the helm, there is hope that this will change.

Eric Naki.

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