Even former foreign minister Naledi Pandor, a facilitator of SA’s relationship with Iran, is fed up with Ramaphosa.
Shock reactions define Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC presidency.
Habitually shocked by brushes with reality, he must be astounded by opinion polls which show his party’s popularity is plunging irretrievably.
The somnambulist didn’t see that coming. Ramaphosa has been shocked by many things, including the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture.
He was also “surprised” that hundreds of thousands of dollars were hidden in furniture at his Phala Phala ranch.
He expressed shock at disclosures of mismanagement and corruption at Eskom, Transnet and South African Airways, although his party was in power during their decline.
During the July 2021 unrest, he was shocked by intelligence failure to predict coordinated riots and shocked by the criminality and destruction.
He has expressed shock over high-profile gender-based violence cases.
He was shocked when emergency Covid funds were looted during the national state of disaster. Ramaphosa expressed outrage at this “theft from the people”.
More recently, Ramaphosa has been surprised by youth unemployment figures and by the utterances of an SA National Defence Force general to Iranian hosts.
ALSO READ: Tainted comrades challenge Ramaphosa
As if all this had caught him unawares. Is this deliberate deception?
Can a re-elected president really be so out of touch in so many spheres?
Perhaps these expressions of shock don’t emanate from a sleepwalker. They could be attempts to distance himself from things that go wrong.
This overplayed tactic was probably behind some of the stupid rhetorical questions he posed at the convention ahead of the launch of the ill-advised National Dialogue.
“We need to ask ourselves why so many people live in poverty, why after decades of democracy, are the prospects of a white child so much better than those of a black child?”
These questions should be asked of him, not by him, given all the roles he has played.
Remember, he led the ANC in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, negotiations that preceded our first democratic elections.
After the 1994 elections, he chaired the Constitutional Assembly which drafted SA’s new constitution.
In 2014, he became deputy president and has been president since 2018. He has helped shape SA.
ALSO READ: Ramaphosa’s political party funding revisions slammed
Now, feigning ignorance, he wants to know why so many people live in poverty. Angazi.
Clearly, this shock and awe response has worn thin. It is widely mocked.
Whoever writes his speeches and his weekly missives From the desk of the President, doesn’t realise a yawning credibility gap has developed.
The latest offering drew scorn on X. Particularly targeted is Ramaphosa’s assertion that: “South Africa’s national interest will forever remain independent, not beholden to external influence.”
Such nonsense will not stop those who detect the influence of undemocratic terror sponsor Iran.
Yet even former foreign minister Naledi Pandor, a facilitator of SA’s relationship with Iran, is fed up with Ramaphosa.
At a memorial lecture in honour of Gertrude Shope, Pandor was referring to Ramaphosa’s poverty question when she said: “There is nothing worse in an organisation, or in a country, than a leader who has no solution. We can’t be asking someone else, ‘how do we solve this?’”
Her attack is a lightning rod for gathering anti-Ramaphosa factions in the disintegrating ANC.
When an electoral bolt comes from the blue, don’t be shocked.
NOW READ: Why a pact between Mashatile and Mbalula is a recipe for disaster for the ANC
