By Sylvia Chebet
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is a man walking a political tightrope as he seeks to secure a second term and retain the dominance of his African National Congress (ANC) party.
Polls predict that ANC, in power since the country’s first multiparty elections in 1994, could lose its parliamentary majority, an unsettling situation for a man whose reelection hopes are pegged on the party’s popularity.
Political analysts reckon Ramaphosa, 71, embodies both the successes and failures of the liberation-struggle party, ANC.
David Monyae, an associate professor of political Science at the University of Johannesburg, tells TRT Afrika that ANC’s achievements are blighted by challenges plaguing many a voter in South Africa.
“ANC has achieved a lot by any standard in terms housing given the structure of the apartheid economy and electrification even though Eskom the energy company in South Africa is in big trouble in terms of load shedding (power rationing),” Monyae said, noting that the party acknowledges it is yet to make progress in some critical areas.
“On land distribution, the core of the liberation struggle in South Africa, nothing much has been done, in terms of dealing with economic liberation of majority blacks, nothing much has been done,” he observes.
“There is still a lot of problems in so many other areas including healthcare, education and it's partly on him (Ramaphosa) as the head of this governing party and he is also part of the legacy of the entire ANC in government for the last 30 years.”
Some of the shortcomings dimming ANC’s popularity are however not of Ramaphosa’s making and could arguably be assigned his predecessors.
But he is harshly judged for the party’s failures over the last five years after he took hold of the reigns.
“Particularly there are no excuses when it comes to corruption. That has been an epidemic… and all this happened under his watch. The economy hasn't been growing, even though we had the pandemic and global financial crisis, still he could have done better,” Monyae believes.
Unemployment rate, standing at a staggering 32%, is yet another thorn in the flesh for Ramaphosa’s ANC but the incumbent believes the party has achieved milestones that will steer it to victory, once again.
Electricity is now accessible to 93% of South Africans, up from 36% during the apartheid regime when it was a White minority privilege. But prolonged energy crisis resulting in daily power cuts of up to 12 hours a day has massively hampered economic activity casting a long shadow on the party’s image.
"It is a great achievement but there it still a lot to do," Ramaphosa acknowledged recently.
The president also acknowledges that many voters are "bitterly critical of (the) ANC," but remains confident that it is still the party to beat and he, the most eligible contender.
"Renewal is not a one-day event."
"The majority of people who have always voted for the ANC still see the ANC as the only vehicle for the transformation process in the country, to consolidate it and make it better,” Ramaphosa said, adding "many people don't see anyone doing better."
“However, this might be the last chance ANC is given, Monyae argues.
“You still have a generation of people like me who remember vividly the past. They still carry scars of the previous regime, and we haven't reached that stage of a forgetting generation of the past and therefore, people view ANC as a liberation movement and try to give it a second chance, a third chance.”
The party aside, Ramaphosa’s personality remains his wildcard according to pundits.
Monyae reckons that despite the tall list of shortcomings, “you still get people that would say oh well, we understand the mistakes, we understand all this but he's the best among the worst.”
Harking back to the days of the liberation struggle and the subsequent transition from apartheid to a democratic South Africa, Ramaphosa, a lawyer by training, stands tall among those recognized as having contributed immensely.
“As a matter of fact, he is, for lack of a better term, a midwife of the democracy that we enjoy. He was chief negotiator for the ANC throughout the negotiation with the apartheid regime and he was a leader in the writing of the constitution that we have,” Monyae points out.
A former trade unionist who represented mine workers, Ramaphosa harbored presidential ambitions since the day of independence but had to contend with a 25-year wait before ascending to the top.
His predecessor, Jacob Zuma, was forced to resign after coming under a barrage of corruption accusations and Ramaphosa - then deputy president - rode the anti-Zuma wave to occupy the house on the hill.
But in this month’s election, the ride is rough and bumpy for the incumbent. The latest poll by polling firm Ipsos shows support for the governing party, which won more than 57% of the vote at the last national elections in 2019, has fallen to just over 40%.
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