JOHANNESBURG — When Jacob Zuma delivered his final state of the nation address as president of South Africa last year, he spoke to a parliament under siege, rocked by protests both inside the national assembly chamber and at its gates.
So unpopular was Zuma that the address, a gala event held each February to mark the official opening of parliament, had become an annual occasion for mass revolt. Street protests were met with increasingly heavy security: riot police held back crowds with stun grenades and tear gas. Soldiers in armored vehicles stood at the ready. In the national assembly, protesting members of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a leftist opposition party, were dragged from the chamber.
A year later and Cyril Ramaphosa, freshly sworn in as the fifth president of post-apartheid South Africa on Feb. 16 delivered his first state of the nation address to a calm, clapping parliament, and widespread popular support.
After nearly nine years of Zuma’s increasingly divisive leadership, Ramaphosa has come into power with an unusual advantage: positive consensus. A former union leader turned wealthy businessman, he has the backing of labor and civil society groups, as well as business.
This is largely a reaction to the extreme unpopularity of Zuma, who presided over economic decline and rising poverty levels, and is currently facing the potential reinstatement of corruption charges related to an arms deal.
Afrobarometer, an independent research network that conducts surveys in Africa, reviewed data from Zuma’s time in office and noted a dramatic drop in support, from 64 percent in 2011 to 36 percent in 2015.
“Over his full tenure, Zuma’s government was perceived to have performed especially badly in reducing crime, managing immigration and the economy, and fighting corruption,” an Afrobarometer report said.
Other polling firms charted a further decline closer to the end of this time in office. According to a survey released in September by global research firm Kantar TNS, only 18 percent of South Africans living in major cities said Zuma was doing a good job.
Ramaphosa was narrowly elected leader of the ANC at a party conference in December, winning over a candidate favored by Zuma. Despite the lack of a decisive victory, Ramaphosa has since gathered momentum and power within the party.
This year’s state of the nation speech was postponed from Feb. 8, an unprecedented delay after the ruling party decided that Zuma should not be given the national platform.
In the week that followed the postponement, the ANC’s national executive committee demanded that Zuma quit the presidency. When he refused, the party threatened to support a non-confidence vote in parliament brought by the opposition. Facing certain ouster, Zuma finally resigned.
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Ramaphosa has been working behind the scenes to extend his base of support within the party, says Susan Booysen, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Governance in Johannesburg. A pressing challenge for the new ANC leader, says Booysen: Rooting out party officials implicated in corruption under Zuma. “It is positive in his favor that he has got such a strong public mandate to act on corruption.”
A lawyer by training, Ramaphosa also has the advantage of shrewd negotiating skills honed in his role leading the ANC side during talks to end apartheid. He has spoken out strongly against corruption and is viewed as a market-friendly pragmatist who will focus his attention on boosting the country’s flagging economy.
Under Zuma, economic growth stagnated and last year the country briefly dipped into a recession. Gross domestic product is expected to expand by 1.4 percent this year, according to South Africa’s Reserve Bank, a slight improvement over 0.9 percent in 2017.
Two major credit rating agencies cut the country’s sovereign debt to sub-investment grade status in 2017 in decisions that highlighted the problem of political uncertainty. Unemployment is officially at 36 percent when “discouraged workers,” a term for people who have given up looking for jobs, are taken into account. It is even higher among youth.
“It has been a missed decade for South Africa,” says Daniel Silke, director of the Cape Town-based Political Futures Consultancy. “We have lost time.”
Ramaphosa has already boosted confidence among businesses and investors, both in South Africa and abroad, Silke says. This was seen at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos where Ramaphosa, at the time still deputy president to Zuma, led a team that offered a reassuring outlook on the country’s prospects.
“You can change sentiment quite quickly,” Silke says. “What you can’t do is turn unemployment around so quickly.”
A Ramaphosa presidency could also signal greater engagement between South Africa, the most sophisticated economy on the African continent, and its regional neighbors. Under Zuma, South African policy had pivoted inward and “the ANC had little concept of what was happening in the rest of world never mind the rest of Africa,” Silke says.
But mindful of Zuma’s time in office, South Africans will be watching their new president carefully. Ramaphosa will be facing an election in a little over a year, and will have to move quickly to exact reforms.
“He is there on a very particular set of expectations: to clean things out, get the economy going and act decisively on corruption,” Booysen says.
South African voters have “lost their innocence” when it comes to their leaders. “They will not give Ramaphosa the same blank check that Zuma got. At the same time, civil society has become very mobilized in a focused way, in terms of extracting accountability from government,” she says.
“That, in a way, is a positive spinoff from the Zuma era.”
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For Cyril Ramaphosa, the Honeymoon Will Be Short originally appeared on usnews.com
