South Africa's 2024 general elections could see the ruling African National Congress (ANC) lose its parliamentary majority in a devastating defeat for President Cyril Ramaphosa (71). He will be reprehensible for leading his party to such a large electoral loss and will be the toughest test of his leadership.
The ANC's vote share fell to 40% from 57.5% in 2019, failing to secure the simple majority (50% + 1) needed to form a government on its own. At the time of writing, the party was seeking to form a national unity government.
The ANC came to power under Nelson Mandela in 1994. Ramaphosa became ANC president in December 2017. He replaced Zuma as president in February 2018, a day after Zuma was forced to resign amid public anger and the threat of a no-confidence motion over corruption allegations during his term. Ramaphosa, who was Zuma's deputy president at the time, was elected president.
Ramaphosa was hailed as a saviour with a strong track record after Zuma's disastrous rule from 2009 to 2018 was riddled with corruption and tarnished the ANC's reputation, but he found the ANC divided and mired in discord and the state hollowed out by the massive corruption and cronyism of the Zuma years.
President Ramaphosa's vision was a new dawn for the country, one in which all citizens would play their part in rebuilding a competent state. But the sheer inertia of incompetent and corrupt Zuma-era appointees has meant that Ramaphosa has so far largely failed to achieve this vision.
Ramaphosa's poor leadership has been blamed on his leadership style, as he has been repeatedly criticised for holding talks for too long and taking decisions too late.
As a political scientist who has followed the Ramaphosa administration, I would say that while Ramaphosa may be criticized for being too cautious, too consultative and taking too long to make decisions, these are precisely the qualities that are important for leading a government of national unity. And there is no one currently at the head of the ANC who could do it better than him.
Read more: South Africa's unity government: Five parties that need to find common ground
Ramaphosa the man
Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa was born in Soweto in 1952 to a police officer father. He began studying law in 1972 and joined student political organisations opposed to apartheid, a racist system that oppressed and exploited the black majority. In 1974 he was detained without trial for 11 months for his political activities.
President Ramaphosa founded the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in 1982 and by 1986 the party was forced to hide from the Special Forces (Apartheid's political police), who detained tens of thousands of activists during successive states of emergency.
Under Ramaphosa's administration, membership grew to 300,000, making it the largest trade union in South Africa and the largest mineworkers' union in the world. Ramaphosa's leadership style in the union was described by one sociologist as “pastoral” – consultative and caring – rather than charismatic. He did not push strikes to their limits, but negotiated compromises, even during the 1987 strike when mining giant Anglo American fired 54,000 miners in the largest strike in history, which lasted three weeks. In 1986, the National Union of Mineworkers voted to appoint the then imprisoned Nelson Mandela as honorary president.
Ramaphosa's career
In 1990, the African National Congress (ANC) was debanned along with other liberation organisations, and as negotiations to end apartheid progressed, Ramaphosa served as part of the National Welcoming Committee, organising the welcome for Mandela and other released political prisoners. In 1991, he became head of the ANC negotiating team at the South African Democratic Congress, the long-running negotiations that led to the end of apartheid and democratic majority rule.
President Ramaphosa performed well in these negotiations, and his relationship with the apartheid National Party's chief negotiator, Rolf Meyer, played a decisive role in various difficult moments and impasses during the negotiations.
Ramaphosa was elected secretary-general of the unbanned ANC in 1991. He was elected as an ANC member of parliament in the country's first democratic elections in 1994.
Ramaphosa left politics after losing the presidential bid to Mandela's vice president to Thabo Mbeki in 1996. When the first version of the black economic empowerment agenda saw big business recruiting black political leaders as business leaders, Anglo American Corporation, South Africa's largest company at the time, effectively gave Ramaphosa shares worth at least 100 million rand (about $5.37 million in today's value). During his business career, Ramaphosa founded investment holding company Shanduka and various other companies.
Ramaphosa has had successes and failures in business but has kept his newfound wealth.
Return to politics
In 2014, he returned to politics when he was appointed Deputy President by President Jacob Zuma. After sensational media exposure of corruption under President Zuma's administration, Ramaphosa was forced to resign. In December 2017, he was elected chairperson of the ANC. At the ANC electoral conference, Ramaphosa narrowly defeated Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who was supported by President Zuma.
He succeeded Zuma as president in February 2018 and was re-elected as South Africa's president following the 2019 general election.
The slight decline in the ANC’s vote share from 62% to 57.5% between 2014 and 2019 could also be attributed to Zuma’s influence, but it is much harder to argue that the ANC’s fall in vote share from 57.5% in 2019 to 40% in the 2024 elections is another delayed consequence of Zuma’s “lean years” (2009-2018).
Read more: South Africa's election results present the government with three options: all risky
Two incidents sparked widespread criticism and controversy against President Ramaphosa. In 2012, while he was director of the mining company Lonmin, he called on his cabinet to take “simultaneous action” after strikers killed several people. He did not foresee that riot police with rifles would be sent to the scene and kill 34 strikers. The Marikana massacre in the North West was the worst police-related massacre since South Africa became a democracy in 1994.
In 2020, a robbery at President Ramaphosa's Palapala hunting farm uncovered millions of rands worth of foreign currency hidden in a sofa. Ramaphosa later claimed the money was proceeds from the sale of buffalo to a wealthy Saudi Arabian businessman.
Although Ramaphosa was not at the premises at the time, his manager's actions were lampooned by a number of cartoonists and drew a torrent of criticism and abuse, exacerbated by the fact that he had not set up a blind trust for the farm and his other business assets – a type of trust set up by billionaires to hide all their business dealings from beneficiaries, such as when they go into politics.
South Africa has strict rules restricting the holding of foreign currency, which has led President Ramaphosa's opponents to call for an investigation, including possible prosecution, against the president. Although the Public Protector found no reason to believe the president had broken the law, that hasn't stopped opponents from continuing to refer to the matter as “Farmgate.”
I'm looking forward to
With the introduction of a proportional representation electoral system following the outcome of the 2024 general election, South Africa will have entered an era of collaborative government at the national, provincial and city levels.
Read more: The end of a liberation movement: How South Africa's ANC became a regular political party – with help from Jacob Zuma
At the time of going to press, the ANC was negotiating a government of national unity to overcome the hurdle of leading a government without a majority, and President Ramaphosa and his temperament could help the country find political stability in the new order of a shifting coalition government.
