President Cyril Ramaphosa testified for the second and last day at the commission of inquiry probing allegations of state capture, thereby bringing to a conclusion one aspect of the hearings. The commission will now go off the public radar and will be back in the news when it returns to make its findings and recommendations.
The jury is largely still out on how Ramaphosa fared in his two days of testimony before the commission chaired by deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo. It was a second appearance for Ramaphosa, who first appeared before Zondo in his capacity as president of the ANC.
The general mood, if comments on social media and the traditional platforms for peddling information are anything to go by, is that both of Ramaphosa’s appearances were disappointing. It could well be that the disappointment stems largely from watching those with power, real or imagined, or those in proximity of said power, passing the buck.
That there was state capture is a fact that’s indisputable, more so is that those implicated and believed to be the masterminds of the project – read the Guptas and former president Jacob Zuma – have avoided accountability by dodging the commission. Today Zuma, a central figure in the Guptas’ project, is serving time in prison for refusing to appear before Zondo when called upon to do so.
Testimony before the commission may have often left observers and the nation near utter despair, at the rot laid bare for all to see and read into it that ours is a hopeless country, well on track to becoming a failed state.
Ramaphosa at times, and some will say overly so, played the role of politician that he is and obviously tried to walk a tight rope, arguing that he was hamstrung by the role history cast him in. He still has an election to win and a party to keep together and, to our disappointment, often came across as someone refusing or reluctant to lead when our problems as a nation demand that he do so.
We beg to differ and would like to declare SA is a glass half-full. A nascent democracy bound to stumble time and again in its baby steps, we believe SA has taught the world a thing or two about this thing called democracy, which is never a finished product.
Here we had before us a sitting president questioned on his role and that of the governing party elite at large. A former president is paying the price for daring to cast himself as above the law. Not many nations, even the so-called established democracies of the West, can boast that.
Notwithstanding the riots of last month, purportedly carried out to force the release of Zuma, the centre is holding, thank you very much. And for that, SA, take a bow.
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