A rchive Date
[ 27-06-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ South Africa ]
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[http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/07/kelly-mcparland-south-africa-gets-its-president-to-be-five-years-early/
South Africa gets its president-to-be five years early
Kelly McParland | Jan 7, 2013 8:28 AM ET
@KellyMcParland
South Africa, where for decades blacks weren’t allowed to vote, now likes to arrange its presidential transitions well in advance. Recently the African National Congress, the only party to hold power since the end of apartheid, overwhelmingly confirmed Jacob Zuma as its leader, ensuring him another five-ear term as president. As deputy president they chose Cyril Ramaphosa, making him overwhelming favourite to succeed Zuma down the road.
It’s all very formal and well-organized, in much the same way the Chinese government likes to present a united front over any infighting. Like China, only one party really matters, and, like China, its top members of that party have a habit of doing very well financially from their positions of power.
As a future president Ramaphosa would be something of a unique figure, since he’s been a central player in both the ANC’s storied past, and its worrying future. He founded and led one of the key organizations in the struggle to end white rule, and then helped write its new constitution; but as one of the richest men in the country he also represents the new South African reality, where a layer of wealthy black entrepreneurs sits uneasily atop a population still struggling to escape poverty.
As a young labour lawyer, Ramaphosa founded the National Union of Mineworkers, which quickly grew from a membership of a few thousand into one of the country’s biggest and most powerful unions, representing the thousands of black workers who laboured in unsafe conditions at minimal pay to extract the minerals on which white South Africans grew rich. He spent months in detention or in hiding over his challenges to white authority, and in 1987 led the biggest miners strike in the country’s history, which lasted three weeks and saw 11 people killed, 500 injured and 400 arrested before mine owners agreed to better wages and working conditions.
Ramaphosa help negotiate Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, but when he was passed over as Mandela’s successor he quit politics and went into business. Estimates of his wealth now range from $250 milllion to $675 million. Johannesburg’s Sunday Times says he’s the second richest black man in the country; his brother-in-law is No. 1. His investment company, Shanduka Group Ltd., has tentacles reaching deep into the South African economy, with stakes in resources, energy, real estate, banking and telecommunications, plus the McDonalds’ restaurant franchise, with 170 outlets throughout the country. He is also said to own a stake in a cellphone tower building operation in Nigeria, and 12.5% in Seacom, an undersea cable company. As well, he sits on the board of one of the country’s biggest banks, biggest breweries and Lonmin Plc, a platinum miner.
His activities at Lonmin demonstrate how far he’s travelled since his union days. Though South African publications say he still maintains his socialist credentials, he took a leading role in suppressing a five-week strike in the summer, in which 45 people died, 34 of them shot dead by police in the worst instance of police violence since the end of apartheid.
E-mails for an inquiry into the violence showed Ramaphosa denouncing the strikers as criminals and demanding the government take a tough line.
In one e-mail, sent just 24 hours before the police crackdown to Lonmin’s chief commercial officer, Ramaphosa wrote angrily: “The terrible events that have unfolded cannot be described as a labour dispute. They are plainly dastardly criminal and must be characterised as such . There needs to be concomitant action to address this situation.” He sent a similar message to South Africa’s mines minister and assured colleagues he was using his influence within the government. The day after the attack, according to South African newspapers, he visited the scene of the shootings and pledged $230,000 towards the cost of funerals. Not surprisingly, unions are not universally enthused about his new status.
Ramaphosa, who isn’t big on interviews, said he’s “reviewing” his business interest in light of his new position. Bloomberg News reported that Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary-general of the 2.2-million-member Congress of South African Trade Unions, demanded Ramaphosa quit all his business posts and place his holdings in a trust.
That may not happen. Despite remaining officially outside politics, Ramaphosa’s business ties are deeply linked with the country’s power structure. Optimists suggest that, given that he’s already rich, he won’t need to use his new position to pad his bank account. That could make him an effective barrier to the corruption that plagues the party: President Zuma, for instance, is at the centre of a scandal over $27 million in government money spent on his private compound in his home village in Zulululand, which includes a helicopter landing pad, tennis court, soccer field and plans for a sports stadium and underground bunkers. Plus $116 million for a new town to be built nearby through a rural development project chaired by Zuma.
“He hasn’t built anything for us,” said the matriarch of the Sithole compound, Phindile Sithole, casting a glare at Mr. Zuma’s spread across the valley. “He has only built for himself.”
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Like Zuma, Ramaphosa was born poor: his birthplace was in Soweto. A South African business publication noted he is now both the second richest and the second most powerful man in the country.
Maybe he’ll be satisfied with that. Maybe not.
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 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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