Ramaphosa's sharpest rebuke should be from his own conscience

A lot would have happened by the time you read this.

At the time of writing, President Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, had been on several media platforms telling South Africans that the president had been perusing the devastating Section 89 Report on Phala Phala and consulting with "key stakeholders" on the best way forward. Phala Phala is the president’s wildlife farm from which a multimillion-dollar robbery is said to have taken place in early 2020.

Ramaphosa is facing allegations of, among others, having failed to report the robbery to the police, possible money laundering - for having kept large amounts of foreign currency that, apparently, had been brought into the country by a yet-to-be-fully-identified Sudanese man without disclosing it to immigration authorities. And the president is also alleged to have performed work for his private company in contradiction of the Constitutional sanction against members of the Executive, including Cabinet members, doing so.

From the time charges were laid against the president by Arthur Fraser, South Africa’s former spy boss and sympathiser of the notorious man from Nkandla, Ramaphosa has either refused outright to answer or has been economical with his explanations about what really took place on his farm.

Few will forget that Ramaphosa returned to national politics and into the highest office - as CEO of reputationally-tarnished destination Brand South Africa – with a promise to clean up, following the institutionally wrecking years overseen by former president Jacob Zuma.

Ahead of his contest for the leadership of the perennially (mis)governing African National Congress, many supporters described him as "the last hope for South Africa", the man who would come in and save the country from the dreadful effects of state capture and other forms of corruption.

While Ramaphosa has never been accused of direct wrongdoing through actively aiding or abetting acts of state capture, questions have been asked about the role of companies he had been involved with, prior to being president.

South Africa has been here before. None of the presidents who came after the late president Nelson Mandela ever got to complete their terms in office and to ceremonially hand over the baton to their successor.

South African presidents, just like members of Parliament, are political deployees who are expected to remain at the beck and call of the parties that sent them to the national assembly and the Cabinet. Despite the pomp and fancy titles such as "Commander-in-Chief" of the country’s joint armed forces, the position of state president is in some ways less powerful than that of party president.

The incumbent state president becomes a lame duck president as soon as someone else gets elected to the presidency of the party - the new party president can effectively expect to be sent to replace the incumbent in the state presidency.???

Going by recent history and the reality that there have not been real systemic changes to ensure that state capture never happens again, the country should expect nothing different to come out of ongoing events, at whatever pace they will unfold.

Should the Special 89 Independent Panel Report be accepted and endorsed by Parliament, what could be a long impeachment process would have to follow. This would be a political process, not a criminal one.

As in the past, ANC parliamentarians cannot be trusted to vote with opposition parties, particularly in support of an impeachment motion proposed by the Democratic Alliance, which many ANC people consider to be their political arch enemy. They know that removing a president in this manner would set a precedent in democratic South Africa.

They supported Zuma on far worse, arguably treasonous, charges in the past, and they’re likely to do it again to support incumbent Ramaphosa if it comes to a vote in the national assembly.?????

But it is also possible that Ramaphosa will decide to spare them the pain of having to go through a potentially divisive political vote and resign. He has already promised to ‘step-aside’ should things come to that.

But of course, he could also have taken a Stalingrad leaf out of Zuma's book and decided on a drawn-out delaying process, claiming to be an adherent of all established constitutional and legal processes. He can do that because the South African National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has demonstrated in recent years that it too masters the art of kicking the proverbial ball further down the road, especially in cases involving powerful politicians.

The reality is that unless Ramaphosa gets impeached by the national assembly and charged by the criminal justice system, he has only his good conscience to use as a reason to step aside before any of that happens, for the sake, as promised by his spokesperson, of the country’s stability.?

But South Africa should no longer afford to keep being held hostage by the internecine battles and other events in the African National Congress. If everything that follows the current sorry saga is left in the hands of the ANC, South Africa can be sure to have little to benefit from it.??