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The Real Cyril Ramaphosa

Cyril Ramaphosa has had an enormously impressive and varied experience of public leadership. As someone who has come through the radical student movement that emphasised the plight of black students under apartheid; served within the trade union movement and facilitated its links with the broader social movement; searched for and found consensus during South Africa’s negotiations for democracy; built a relationship with the business community; and then quietly returned to politics, ending up as deputy president and then president of the country, Ramaphosa has truly seen it all. With all this experience under his belt, Ramaphosa may be the most well-equipped and capable leader to run the ANC and the country in the post-apartheid era.

After matriculating from Mphaphuli High School, which produced the leading students in what was then the homeland of Venda (now part of Limpopo province), Ramaphosa attended what was then called the University of the North (or Turfloop) to study law. Here he became involved in the student movement, both the Student Christian Movement and Black Consciousness. Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, who has worked with Ramaphosa in the National Planning Commission, says of him, “Cyril is SASO.” The South African Students Organisation, founded in the late 1960s by Steve Biko and other proponents of Black Consciousness, became the embodiment of intellectual self-determination among black students who wanted to play a decisive role in the struggle against apartheid. According to Biko,11 Black Consciousness was a way to ground the anti-apartheid movement in the lived experience of black students. It was an affirmation of black identity as a tool to contest the political, social, economic and cultural subjugation of black people. Here within SASO Ramaphosa cut his teeth as a leader.

After completing his studies, Ramaphosa began work in the trade union movement, and in 1982 helped found the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM),12 whose first secretary he became. NUM developed into a powerful union in the mining sector and became an indomitable anti-apartheid force on the labour front. In the fight against apartheid, economic disruptions in the form of labour strikes inflicted serious harm on the system, and helped turn the captains of industry and the economic establishment against the National Party and the system of apartheid.

NUM and Ramaphosa were subsequently instrumental in the formation of the trade union federation COSATU, which was launched in December 1985 and whose general secretary Ramaphosa became.13 The mining sector, which had been built up historically on the back of the exploitative migrant labour system, would provide a good arena for COSATU to link labour practices in South Africa with the broader struggle for social justice. COSATU was not an ordinary union focused only on the narrow shopfloor interests of workers; it built solidarity with other social movements outside the labour sector such as civil society, the churches, political organisations and student movements. COSATU’s strength was its mass appeal: under Ramaphosa’s leadership, union membership grew from 6,000 in 1982 to 300,000 in 1992, giving it control of nearly half of the total black workforce in the South African mining industry. Some trade union historians speak of COSATU as an example of “mass movement trade unionism”,14 and correctly so. This is the reason why most of those who led COSATU were also linked to the broader grassroots movement against apartheid, represented nationally by the United Democratic Front (UDF). It was through the mass anti-apartheid movement that Ramaphosa emerged as a leader on the national stage.

The UDF, formed in Cape Town in 1983, was an umbrella organisation drawing together hundreds of youth movements, community organisations, trade unions, professional bodies and church groups throughout the country. When both the UDF and COSATU came under increasing government restrictions in the late 1980s, the two came together to cooperate in a loose alliance called the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM), in which Ramaphosa took a leading role. Ramaphosa’s own story needs to be understood within the context of the “grassroots coalition”15 that resulted in mass resistance against the apartheid system. If Ramaphosa’s ascent to power as president of the ANC and of the country is an indication of a shift in leadership approach, the politics of the UDF and MDM offer a good starting point for understanding what this shift might entail. It is from this vantage point that Ramaphosa’s leadership style should be understood.

Led organically by a group of local activists within the country, the UDF/MDM produced a breed of leaders who navigated between the ANC’s Marxist revolutionary politics and the practical limitations of operating within the country under an oppressive system. Historians agree that the UDF was “an amalgam of rather diverse organisations over which the central leadership exerted only a loose control”.16 Mass movements that operate outside a formal institutional framework tend to be loosely organised and lack a centralised leadership and system of command. Unlike political parties, they often do not subscribe to a hierarchical structure. The UDF displayed a democratic culture typical of mass movements, demonstrating a haphazard organisational life and lack of coordinated leadership. The leadership style of the UDF was dominated by the notion of collective leadership, very unlike the ANC’s idea of democratic centralism. All in all, the UDF produced a breed of leaders with a distinct culture of leadership that was shaped by the immediate circumstances under which the movement then existed. It is within this context that Ramaphosa’s leadership style developed.

Judged in terms of a hierarchical pattern of leadership, with systematic and clearly defined flows of power from leaders to members, the UDF did not fare well. From the bureaucratic point of view, it was poorly constituted. But when it came to its ability to inspire the masses to take political action, the UDF was exceptionally effective in undermining the apartheid system. It was because of the success of the UDF’s internal resistance that the apartheid government lost the capacity to control the country in the eyes of the international community and its own followers.17 As a result of the disruptions caused by the UDF, it became difficult for the apartheid government to assure the regime’s increasingly jittery allies that the situation in South Africa was in hand. For those who sympathised with the UDF, on the other hand, the formation raised the hope that apartheid could be defeated without violence – by the staging of public protests and labour stay-aways. These were the manoeuvres that exposed the hollowness of the regime’s PR campaign and undermined the piecemeal reforms that the regime sought to undertake to defuse tensions in the country.

Today there are many prominent leaders in South Africa with roots in the UDF. They are currently found throughout the population: in churches, the business sector, civil society, universities, government, trade unions and political parties alike. When the ANC was unbanned in 1990 and the democratic transition began in the country, most of the UDF leaders invoked their membership of the ANC. On their return to South Africa, the formerly exiled leaders of the ANC displaced the local UDF leaders and ensured that their own people would take centre stage in the political leadership of the country. It would also mean that the party would practise a type of leadership that had been learned in exile, particularly from countries in the Soviet bloc.

From a moral point of view, the UDF could not press for its continued existence once the ANC had returned. This was because it seemed morally indefensible for any organisation to attempt to compete with the majestic ANC, which had been in exile for decades and accumulated enormous international respect and credibility. The euphoria that surrounded the prospect and then the reality of an ANC-led democratic government was so powerful that there was no space for proper consideration of the future of the UDF. Mass driven as it was, the UDF could not compete with the ANC, and hence the organisation was disbanded and its members joined the ranks of the ANC and other parties in the country. The UDF as a political idea became frozen, only to make a return with the ANC’s decline of legitimacy later in the process of democratic consolidation in the country.

Ramaphosa’s return to politics is part of this gradual process of unfreezing of the UDF principles of leadership and mobilisation. Indeed, by rejecting Zuma and his allies and electing Ramaphosa at Nasrec in 2017, ANC members may have unintentionally opened the way for a return of the leadership tradition of the UDF.

Quite often when people reflect retrospectively on the UDF in post-apartheid South Africa, those reflections are nostalgic and tend to call for the re-establishment of the UDF as a mass-based movement. But there may no longer be space for a mass movement like the UDF in the current South Africa, simply because organised political parties are generally accepted as the best way for conducting politics in modern democracies. As Dominika Kruszewska notes, “because democracy requires organisation, mass movements face pressure to create formal organisations to successfully advance their goals”.18 As a disruptor of the apartheid system, the UDF was perfect in this sense. But in a democratic society, the movement would not be able to serve as a platform for pursuing political goals. After the great sea change of the early 1990s, either the UDF had to be organised into a formal political party or it had to disperse.

Why is the UDF so important in understanding Ramaphosa’s leadership? This has much to do with his role and ability as a coordinator. According to Makgoba, each of South Africa’s post-1994 presidents has embodied a different leadership style. Former president Zuma was a political survivor and his leadership style lacked the grand vision that Nelson Mandela, for instance, exhibited. Mandela’s brand of leadership was, on the contrary, able to unite people behind the vision of a multiracial prosperous South Africa. Yet, in the event, Mandela did not deliver significantly in terms of substantive matters and lacked the ability to coordinate action towards the achievement of his grand vision.

According to Makgoba, Ramaphosa can best be understood as a coordinator; more specifically, a consensus-driven coordinator. Citing his experience of working with Ramaphosa at the National Planning Commission, of which Ramaphosa was deputy chairperson, Makgoba pointed to the commission’s achievements under Ramaphosa’s leadership: first of all the diagnostic report and then the National Development Plan (NDP). I have misgivings about long-term grand plans, particularly for a country which is suffering from basic problems of state capacity and functional bureaucracy.19 But compared with other grand policy positions that have been adopted by the ANC government since 1994, the NDP has attracted a great degree of consensus. Even the opposition Democratic Alliance has said: “The National Planning Commission’s National Development Plan (NDP) points to an emerging consensus at the non-racial, progressive centre of South African politics. The developing policy coherence on the fundamental issues facing South Africa is an exciting and significant development.”20 The process of drafting and adopting the NDP was arguably one of the few political processes that involved multi-stakeholder approaches, as is evident from the wide buy-in from key interests, parties and organisations in the country. It is indeed compelling to look at the plan as an attempt at a consensus-driven approach to forming a coordinated grand vision for South Africa.

Beside all the other things he has accomplished, including his work on the NDP, Ramaphosa also led the process of negotiations that produced the Constitution of South Africa in 1996. In recent years, radical young South Africans, particularly members of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), have tended to denounce the Constitution as a sham, a Judas Iscariot moment when the revolution was sold for a few pieces of silver. This is the explanation they advance whenever they are frustrated with the slow pace of progress in post-apartheid South Africa. Yet in reality the negotiations were not an easy path and they also came close to shipwreck on several occasions. In the end, consensus was arrived at and the principles laid out then have shaped the political system till today.

When opening the CODESA (Convention for a Democratic South Africa) talks in 1991, Mandela remarked: “The diverse interests represented [here] speak of the capacity to develop consensus across the spectrum and of the desire to maximise common purpose amongst South Africans.”21 Mandela had a clear sense that it would take a great deal of concession on all sides for the talks to yield a united front amid conflicting interests. As Professor Shadrack Gutto used to emphasise to us students at the Wits Law School, strong consensus occurs when all or most parties agree on the main issues, not necessarily on everything. It is the willingness to gain some and let go of some. Consensus does not produce losers and winners; rather, it produces a common front and a common commitment to defend the outcomes publicly. During the negotiations for South Africa’s transition, it was Ramaphosa’s duty as the leading negotiator for the ANC to secure consensus, and secure it he did.

Now with hindsight, particularly after the Zuma era has passed, we can see the wisdom of what was achieved with the negotiations: the values of the Constitution have become deeply infused into the political system that we inhabit. Even the EFF, with its ambivalence towards the Constitution, anchored its successful bid to frustrate Zuma on the basis of the very Constitution. Moreover, Zuma’s resistance to criticism and his resort to court actions were also anchored on the very same Constitution: he often bemoaned the fact that his constitutional rights as president and as an individual had been violated. As has been remarked, some of the best developments in our society have come about through people with the most sinister motives.

In the post-Zuma era, the South Africa we have today requires a different approach in terms of political leadership. One hopes that Ramaphosa will indeed fit the bill and prove capable of leading this complex multicultural, democratic society. With all his experience, as we have outlined in this chapter, Ramaphosa is well qualified and equipped to lead the ANC and the country at this point in time. In many previous stages of his life, he demonstrated that he could improvise and adapt to different contexts and the demands of different institutions with varying organisational cultures. He has emerged from his history as coordinator-in-chief: the coordinator of consensus.

For the first time in post-apartheid history, the ANC is now led by someone who did not go into exile. This also says that Ramaphosa knows how to operate within a system, while most ANC members who were in exile only observed systems without necessarily participating in them. In exile, the idea of leadership was formed in abstraction, by way of observing and reading and not by participation. Here at home during the last few years of apartheid, oppositional leadership had to contend with the practicality of functioning within the constraints of apartheid, a system nonetheless. What are the positive aspects that accrue to individuals who learn to function within a system, even when they are politically excluded by the system? In leading movements that had to navigate through the apartheid system, Ramaphosa had to appeal to the idea of consensus, as the best way to keep everyone believing that change would come. In a similar manner, democracy is also a game of confidence. If people have confidence in the system because they believe it has potential, they tend to see solutions instead of problems.

Ramaphosa’s return to politics could signal a different agenda from the one that has been pursued by the ANC in recent years. The question is whether he will resuscitate the consensus approach to politics and, if so, what the role of the EFF will be. It is not clear what Ramaphosa’s key agenda is. He is a complex leader with an incredible ability to adapt to organisations and circumstances. He also carries the legitimacy of having led mass movements, an undisputed currency in South Africa’s culture of mass mobilisation. South Africans tend to believe that, while you can win over the table through quiet negotiations, you can do even better if you march on the streets and disrupt other people from going about their lives. That’s Ramaphosa’s people for you.