RYAN SMITH: SA can choose a different path if we stop looking for ANC messiahs

I have been reading, with mild intrigue, media reports and commentary on deputy president Paul Mashatile’s attempts to win over the SA business community as President Cyril Ramaphosa’s likely replacement after the 2024 general election.

While scanning one article I couldn’t help but be smacked by a wave of unsettling déjà vu. Aside from a few details regarding Mashatile’s lack of business acumen compared to Ramaphosa’s, I could easily have swapped their names and be reading a similar article back in 2018 at the height of “Ramaphoria” as we all eagerly anticipated the “New Dawn”.

We are rereading the same tired message just attached to a different ANC leader. Some in the media want voters to treat the symptom of a problem and not the cause. Why, in propping up yet another ANC leader, are these commentators hoping to fix SA by repeating the same mistake? 

The modus operandi is proving to be much the same. Considering what we have been through as a country under three decades of ANC misgovernance, it now raises the question: how much of the ANC’s hegemony comes down to the media's and, to a certain extent big business’s, myopic view of SA politics? And why, come every election, are the rose-tinted glasses pushed back towards our brow in search of the next ANC messiah?

While I was experiencing déjà vu, come every general election commentators in the SA media experience a case of jamais vu (“never seen”, a sense of eeriness and the observer’s impression of experiencing something for the first time, despite rationally knowing that they have experienced it before, sometimes associated with certain types of aphasia, amnesia, and epilepsy).

This would explain the commentariat’s selective amnesia when it comes to the ANC and its leaders, especially those vying for the presidency. There is, perhaps, a sense of unease that the senseless and naive promotion of yet another ANC leader has been done before with identical consequence, but it is over-ridden by a self-soothing belief that this time it is new. This time it is different. This time the ANC really means it.

The ugly truth of the matter, difficult as it may be for some to confront, is that we have seen this all before. We have been here before. We have been gaslit by the ANC, and some in the media, repeatedly in what can only be described as an abusive and manipulative relationship. It’s time to get out. South Africans need to start seeing through this charade, put on for us every five years.

Prominent media commentators and publications ignore the gross policy failures of the ANC, its continued rampant corruption, and slew of broken promises under the leaders they helped prop up. Rather, the slate of their previous ANC presidential endorsements is conveniently cleaned, and the hunt begins again in earnest to find the one man on the inside who can right the ship. Political parties such as the DA pay for even the slightest misgiving, but the media and big business have never had to apologise for the growing line of false ANC prophets we have been sold.

Where publications such as The Economist once hailed Ramaphosa as the great reformer, I have no doubt it is searching for the next ANC bigwig behind which to throw its weight. And each time it ignores the various warnings it has been issued, entranced by its five-yearly state of jamais vu. So perhaps it’s time to warn SA, and these commentators, once more. 

The country cannot, and will not, be saved by an individual. It is a bizarre dichotomy that SA politics imposes an importance on party leaders and personal brand recognition in a political system that does not permit presidential elections. And herein lies the problem: we are far too enamoured by the personality, the celebrity of a party leader, so much so that we are blinded to the policy offering, which in the ANC’s case always comes as a stinging backfire once the party is re-elected.   

So, when Mashatile gets up to deliver a bland and paper-thin offering to business leaders, we should judge him neither on his charm and charisma nor on his promises of reform. We must judge him on the policy suite and past actions of his party. In the same period that Mashatile tried to woo big business, the National Assembly passed the National Health Insurance Bill where the ANC, including Mashatile, used its majority to rubber stamp this disastrous piece of legislation, pushing it closer into act.

I wonder if the CEO of Discovery was in attendance at one of Mashatile’s talks, knowing that his business model for private healthcare, repeatedly voted one of the best in the world, will be wiped out by ANC centralisation and over-regulation. How convincing will Mashatile then look when SA’s world-renowned doctors and specialists leave the country in droves and collapse what’s left of our once world-leading healthcare offering? 

At the same time that Mashatile tries to woo big business, SA faces the very real threat of international sanctions imposed upon our ailing economy due to the ANC’s errant and self-serving foreign policy in national government’s seat. Fresh from his diplomatic blunder of a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine and Russia, Ramaphosa has only tarnished SA’s image on the international stage and painted us as a dithering global pariah state that has abandoned the principles of the free world enshrined in our constitution in favour of a global warmonger and despot.

What will big business then do when access to global trade is cut overnight and more South Africans lose their jobs and go hungry, all because of Mashatile and the ANC? Better yet, what will big business do when operations cease entirely once the electricity grid collapses due to — you guessed it — Mashatile and the ANC? You see, you cannot remove the individual from the party in SA. Trying to do so is the ultimate case of jamais vu. Instead of looking for someone else to better articulate bad ANC policy, it is time to look for someone with a policy alternative. Better yet, look for someone who has delivered on one. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. 

But perhaps the biggest downfall of big business and the commentariat in this regard is their ANC tunnel vision. While Mashatile minces his words at the JSE to limp applause, the DA’s Moonshot Pact is hard at work to unseat him. Already the provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal which, along with the Western Cape, comprise 66% of our economic activity and 60% of our population, are within easy reach of a stable opposition coalition.

At a national level too, the pact is at work to unseat the ANC and keep the EFF out now that a viable path to victory has presented itself. Big business would do well to back the Moonshot Pact. With the DA as the anchor tenant of a new majority SA will get sound policy with a proven track record of delivery. Forget supporting just another team — now business leaders can support a winning team too.

The ANC is no longer the status quo for SA. South Africans, the commentariat included, need to remove the rose-tinted glasses and weaponise our democracy if we want the change we so desperately need. That begins by voting for policy and delivery over charm and personality, and by searching for leaders instead of messiahs. The country cannot afford to elect another false prophet. Doing so will only prophesy our own doom. It is time to vote wisely with our heads, and not naively with our hearts.

• Smith is chief of staff to the federal leader of the DA.