President Cyril Ramaphosa is sick of all your noise

Does President Cyril Ramaphosa actually want to be president any more? Would he be excited to win another term in office, if the ANC holds on to power after the 2024 general elections?

This question was put to Ramaphosa during an engagement with the Cape Town Press Club on Thursday [last week] – and it’s not a trivial one.

At 71, Ramaphosa is some years younger than the likes of Joe Biden and Donald Trump – both of whose fitness to hold office on the grounds of advanced age has recently been questioned.

But though Ramaphosa may be in sharper mental health than either of his American political counterparts, does he retain any real appetite for the job of South Africa’s head of state?

He didn’t answer the question directly. Instead, Ramaphosa paid tribute to the “new and novel way” in which the ANC is vetting candidates for public office, specifying that he had recently been before a 10-person interview panel, which grilled him for two hours on, among other things, his personal financial situation.

“I was rather pleased with that because it showed the renewal process in my party,” Ramaphosa mused.

If the ANC holds on to its majority, Ramaphosa heads back to the Union Buildings.

“I will do precisely that, if you don’t mind,” the president said with a smile that masked a sense of pointed peevishness that emerged at various points during Thursday’s engagement.

Growing defensiveness

As colleagues have pointed out, Ramaphosa’s recent refrain – while giving the State of the Nation Address (Sona), for instance – has been the phrase “Whether you like it or not," which he directs at sceptical critics. Whether you like it or not, life has improved for ordinary South Africans under an ANC government, and so on.

The phrase suggests a kind of growing defensiveness on Ramaphosa’s part, which was equally evident while he was taking questions from journalists – itself a vanishingly rare occasion – on Thursday.

Asked what he made of NCOP deputy speaker and ANC MP Sylvia Lucas’ comment in parliament [last] week that load shedding is “not the end of the world," Ramaphosa replied: “I don’t think she meant it.”

When this response elicited hoots of incredulity from the audience, mostly non-journalists, Ramaphosa retorted: “Either I am able to answer the question, or I just keep quiet.”

On South Africa’s approach to the International Court of Justice over Israel: “We were heavily criticised... We were told our cause or case was baseless... We were pummelled with criticism.”

Concerning the mysterious Russian ship that docked in Simon’s Town in December 2022: “We were criticised over the arrival of Lady R here.”

When my colleague Peter Fabricius pressed Ramaphosa after the event’s end over the ANC’s participation in Moscow’s upcoming “neocolonialism” conference, he was told by the president – again in a jocular fashion, but perhaps with a slight edge – to “relax”.

The general impression one was left with was of a politician who is tired, frustrated and increasingly impatient about making nice with his government’s seemingly endless critics.

This again begs the question: Does Cyril Ramaphosa truly want to return as president of South Africa?

Bullish about ANC electoral chances

“The ANC expects to emerge victorious” against all comers in the upcoming elections, Ramaphosa assured his audience. (He refused to be drawn on the likely election date.)

He mentioned several times, with a touch of either bemusement or amusement, that there are expected to be somewhere around 350 parties contesting this year’s poll.

Among them, in a wonderful Shakespearian twist, will be the new political outfit of Ramaphosa’s former boss: Jacob Zuma’s MK party, which is already performing surprisingly well in parts of KwaZulu-Natal.

Is Ramaphosa worried?

No. Because, despite “the predictions of many in media circles, political analysts,” and so forth, the ANC still has it in the bag.

“You shall see me back at [this] very position,” Ramaphosa predicted. It looked a bit like the spirit was leaving his body.

As for Zuma: “I regard him as another political opponent.” Albeit one who knows where every ANC body has been buried for the last 60-odd years.

Subject of Israel brings out the statesman

It was a sign either of the rarified setting – Cape Town’s swanky members-only club, Kelvin Grove – or the atmosphere of the times that a great deal of the engagement focused on South Africa’s foreign policy.

Ramaphosa has sometimes seemed like a politician most fulfilled when occupied with international statecraft. This was true for his Thursday Q&A, too.

In response to questions about load shedding, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme and the permanently-in-limbo National Health Insurance Bill, Ramaphosa trotted out boilerplate ANC copy and increasingly implausible assurances – although he appeared to walk back his Sona claim that load shedding would end imminently when he said he could not “set a date” for the end of the electricity crisis.

It was in reply to an emotional rant from a member of the public about the position of the South African Jewish community since the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel that Ramaphosa most seemed to hit his presidential stride.

“I have been very clear in condemning the actions taken against Israelis on October 7,” the president said, describing the Hamas attacks as “abhorrent” and "inhuman”.

He continued: “We have equally condemned what we see as a disproportionate response from the state of Israel.”

Ramaphosa’s peevishness returned when he told the woman in question that he had “spoken out – if you cared to pay attention to it – against any form of attack against South African Jews.”

But he was sober and statesmanlike for the most part on this topic, stressing his “deep respect for our Jewish compatriots” while remaining “concerned about discrimination against Palestinians.”

It was a glimpse of President Cyril Ramaphosa circa 2018: the one who caused even the most ANC-sceptical pundits to briefly set aside their concerns in the hope that this could be a truly nation-uniting political figure.

But the glimpse was fleeting.

The president on display for the rest of Thursday’s engagement was a man who looked – to put it colloquially – well and truly over it. And by the signs of his reception, so are many of his countryfolk.

- Daily Maverick