FIKILE-NTSIKELELO MOYA | Ramaphosa personality cult a danger to ANC’s soul

Back in 2012 when the ANC was celebrating its centenary year and its leaders campaigning to lead the party, a political phenomenon known as “Anyone But Zuma (ABZ)” emerged.

According to this theory, some ANC leaders lobbied their comrades to vote for anyone to become party president as long as that person’s name was not Jacob Zuma.

Regrettably for this short-sighted lobby, Zuma romped home with more than three quarters of the vote, 75,1% (2,983 votes) while his opponent Kgalema Motlanthe could only amass 991 votes (24,9%).

The “Anyone But Zuma” was always destined to fail. To lobby on the basis of why the alternative is worse instead of why the idea being defended is better, is a political strategy that has short legs.

It is fear mongering. Individuals get over their fear of the unknown and once they do, they forever lose their veneer of invincibility.

The ABZ – because SA and the ANC in particular loves acronyms – spent its energies telling anyone who would listen what not to do. It did not tell anyone why they thought that Motlanthe was a better candidate for the position.

Some 10 years later, we have an iteration of the ABZ. This time it is “Anyone But Ramaphosa (ABR)”.

By choosing to insulate Ramaphosa by recommending that party’s MPs vote against a motion to start the impeachment process, the ANC national executive committee and national working committee have won a battle to save his skin but may have lost the war to save the party’s soul.

Like the ABZ, which was totally obsessed with thinking about who should be kept away from the levers of power, the ABR spends all its energies suggesting that without Ramaphosa, the ANC and the country are doomed.

It does not seem concerned with selling the positive attributes of their guy but focuses on what’s wrong with the opponent. In both campaigns, nothing much is said about the real questions of personal integrity and probity about the person at issue but rather seeks to redirect attention elsewhere.

As was the case in 2012, those who want him do not tell us about his merits but rather the demerits of his opponents. Their strategy seems limited to saying forget about Ramaphosa just imagine what we might have if you remove him.

This is not to say that they are wrong about pointing to the shortcomings of their foes. It is helpful to know who we must avoid giving power to but it does not in itself explain why that power is safer with their preferred candidate.

Just like the 2012 lobby did not work on convincing anyone why Motlanthe was a better candidate, the present campaign does not say why Ramaphosa is the only person in his party who is capable of reforming the party and purging it of power-hungry thieves.

What they are not saying is how is it possible that in a party with hundreds of thousands of members, only one man has the ability to save it from the thieves they say are within.

Perhaps they hope that nobody notices the implication of their campaign, which is that the commitment to renewal and purging the party of the miscreants is not universally shared but a Ramaphosa personal project.

One must wonder what would happen to the renewal and cleansing project if Ramaphosa were to be hit by the proverbial bus.

Ramaphosa’s supporters may succeed in insulating him from the scrutiny he should face. As they do that, they must be alive to create a new monster: the cult of personality.

The party and the country can ill-afford a leader who believes the consoling lies of those who see it as their obligation to tell the head of state how wonderful he is and beyond doing any wrong.

Hopefully, someone who does not depend on Ramaphosa’s continued stay in office will tell him that he should worry if his party thinks that he is the beginning and ending of all that is good about that organisation.

That some of those who say he should avail himself for the scrutiny are themselves shady or have ulterior motives, changes nothing about the substantial matters.

Asking Ramaphosa to avail himself for a process to determine whether he has a case to answer does not in itself mean that we have made a judgment against him. It means that he, like all of us, should not be held to idealised standards or virtue. He is human. He does and will get things wrong.