London - One of the conspicuous absentees at the 2022 US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington DC a few days ago was President Cyril Ramaphosa.
While his counterparts from the usual suspects in Africa were strutting their stuff and jockeying for US funds and patronage, it was left to Naledi Pandor, the Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, to fly the flag at the most important annual gathering for African leaders at the nexus of global political, economic and security power.
Ramaphosa’s absence, far from being a case of unintended consequences, was a calculated, if not forced, saving grace to spare the blushes of the Biden administration.
After all, it could have been embarrassing for the White House to be seen hosting a leader who had just been bailed out by his parliamentary party voting against an impeachment motion with implications of large sums of undeclared cash and alleged money laundering.
This follows an independent panel’s report into the circumstances leading to the theft of an undisclosed amount of foreign currency “stored” or “concealed” in a sofa at President Ramaphosa’s Limpopo farm at Phala Phala in February 2020, which found that he may have violated the Constitution and that there is a prima facie case to answer.
It was a lucky December 13 for the president, for he easily survived the impeachment debate and vote, thanks to the governing ANC’s majority in the impromptu National Assembly, three days shy of the start of the party’s 55th national conference, under the deliciously provocative theme: “Defend and Advance the Gains of Freedom – Renewal Through Unity.”
Washington may have beckoned abroad, but Ramaphosa was rightly preoccupied with his next challenge at home – retaining the ANC presidency and thus leading the party into the crucial general election in 2024.
Judging by the proceedings in the first three days of the ANC conference, marred by intermittent over-exuberance, procedural disruptions and protests, especially by factional supporters of disgraced ex-president Jacob Zuma, it was going to be a drawn-out and difficult affair down to the wire.
It is important not to overthink the Zuma distractions, but even more important not to underestimate them.
A return to a Zuma-controlled ANC would be disastrous for the country and the prestige of the continent.
Zuma, after all, was supposedly on medical parole following conviction of contempt of court. That there is a vitriolic battle for the soul of the ANC going on must have the party founders and stalwarts, especially Madiba, turning in their graves.
How ironic and revealing of the extent of ANC party dysfunction that on the very day, December 16, South Africa was marking Reconciliation Day along the theme “National Unity, Healing, and Renewal”, Ramaphosa in his opening speech to the conference was constantly heckled with some delegates demanding “change, change”, albeit ANC MPs rallied round him to present a near-united front.
Zuma timed his staged walk into the conference hall to loud cheers and anti-Ramaphosa chants from the KwaZulu-Natal delegates, further disrupting the president’s address.
As if that was not enough, Zuma on the same day, in an act of defiance and desperation, also took out a private prosecution against Ramaphosa, alleging that he was an “accessory after the fact” to a breach of the National Prosecuting Authority Act; this was by virtue of Ramaphosa having failed to act against the people accused of revealing details about JZ’s health during his contempt of court case.
Ramaphosa in a prompt statement rejected “with the utmost contempt Mr Jacob Zuma’s abuse of legal processes and perversion of the ‘nolle prosequi’ (private prosecution) provision” in his summons, which was “hopelessly sub-standard and demonstrate absolute disregard of the law”.
Despite his governance flaws, including his style and the fact that questions remain to be answered
regarding the Phala Phala affair, there are many across the political spectrum who prefer Ramaphosa to stay on as the president of the ANC and the country into the 2024 elections.
Some even suggest that a naive Ramaphosa may have been set up, allegedly by Zuma apparatchiks and their dirty tricks campaign, in pursuit of revenge for the former president’s ousting in 2018.
The fallout from Phala Phala and the infighting within the ANC, which has left many questions unanswered at least in the public domain, has far more damaging and festering implications, including for South Africa’s foreign, political, economic, investment, security and cultural relations.
The marginalisation of championing South Africa’s interests at the top table in the US capital at a time when the country is faced with entrenched structural socio-economic challenges in a global environment of multiple uncertainties may turn out to be a cost too far.
Instead, it was the leaders of Senegal, Mozambique, Gambia, Egypt, Nigeria, DRC et al, that set the bilateral US-Africa engagement playbook at this year’s summit.
It’s a far cry from the past two years when Ramaphosa was fêted at multiple international indabas including the G7, G20, COP26, 2021 US-Africa Leaders Summit and the EU-Africa Summit that hailed him as the preferred choice African leader that the West could do business with.
Look at the money rolling in from the EU, UK and the US following Ramaphosa’s agreement at COP26 for South Africa’s just transition to clean energy away from coal.
The latest round of funding was in November, including a R9 billion concessional loan from the World Bank and €300 million each from France and Germany.
Such largesse would have been impossible under a pro-Zuma dispensation, given the damage caused by his era of state capture.
Unless of course they prefer to be indebted to the Kremlin or Beijing.
Ramaphosa will be buoyed by a spate of good news on the economic front in Q3, 2022, albeit modest –GDP increasing to 1.6% from a 0.7% contraction in Q2; unemployment decreasing from 33.9% in Q2 to 32.9% in Q3 2022; and the affirmation of the country’s long-term foreign and local currency debt ratings by S&P Global and Fitch Ratings because of the National Treasury’s “higher-than-expected tax revenues” and the “government’s strong efforts to control expenditure”.
The lengths Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana is going to to pre-empt South Africa being grey-listed by the Financial Action Task Force for lack of compliance with some 40 of its anti-money laundering rules – including tabling “two bills in Parliament aimed at addressing weaknesses in our legislative framework” and promising to implement laws on anti-money laundering and corruption more effectively – suggest that Team Ramaphosa’s foreign politico-economic vision is firmly looking West as opposed to the East.
Parker is an economist and writer based in London
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.