Question

How does the political economic view of the case of South-Africa’s recent transition to a new president relate to a transition from personal to impersonal exchange? Cite news source used in answering question.

Answer 1

No wonder the elevation of a new president has excited so much hope among international well-wishers. That new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was described thus by a former British Cabinet secretary: “By far the most impressive South African I ever met in a decade of working with the black independent trade unions that grew into the force that effectively destroyed apartheid from within.” Ramaphosa is widely reputed to have been Nelson Mandela’s preferred successor back when Mandela retired from office in 1999.

In his first speech as president, Ramaphosa promised to “turn the tide of corruption.” He vowed to end the “plunder of public resources” and to “put behind us the era of diminishing trust in public institutions and weakened confidence in our country’s public leaders.”

Ramaphosa’s first round of appointments sends an ambiguous message. Two business-friendly figures, both previously fired by Zuma, have been added to the administration. Nhlanhla Nene has been restored to the ministry of finance, from which he was fired in December 2015 after his own conflicts with the overbearing Zuma. Nene’s successor Pravin Gordhan will oversee the government’s troubled and corrupt state-owned enterprise portfolio as Minister of Public Enterprises. Both remain opponents of the nuclear deal.

Jacob Zuma was the unacceptable, unsophisticated face of South African petty corruption. Cyril Ramophosa is the credentialed, Davos-attending face of a blend of state power and private wealth familiar from Putin’s Moscow to Trump’s Washington. It’s perhaps an improvement to replace the one with the other. But South Africa’s transition to democracy will not be secure until and unless it recognizes that its future will be as stunted by institutionalized corruption as its past was deformed by institutionalized racism.

Vatican News

Cyril Ramaphosa played a major role in South Africa’s pivotal mining sector establishing the National Union of Mine-workers and fighting for the transformation of labour relations in the mining industry under the apartheid government, all of which were key in bringing about the political change that led to the release of Nelson Mandela and the beginning of democracy.

Dowling, who is the bishop of Rustenberg, home to the biggest platinum mines in the world, noted that in his SONA Ramaphosa addressed head-on crucial economic and social issues pertaining to the mining reality.

“He said there has to be real restitution and he called for a conversion of attitudes and a response to the suffering” he said.

Interestingly, Dowling continued, when referring to the 2012 Marikana massacre, he used the number of 44 who were killed – while normally there is just a focus on the 34 who were shot by the police – but that was preceded a few days earlier by horrendous massacres of 10 people that contributed to the anger and resort to violence that ensued.

Dowling noted that Ramaphosa was implicated in that terrible chapter of South African history because he was on LONMIN’s Board and said “the words he used there had a spiritual content that pleased me: he wants to reach out and restore broken people and broken relationships”

He said he is clearly reaching out to all the sectors – the Unions and the mining companies – and that, he added, is going to be critical because the economic climate has been so bad with massive retrenchments which cause even greater poverty and unhappy Unions.

“So we need a real influx of investment so the mines can resurrect themselves” he said.

Dowling concluded noting that as in many other sectors in South Africa, the mining community is at a junction and he expressed hope for the President’s call to bring everyone together to dialogue about a new Mining Charter: that could really bring us forward in this crucial debate”.

Dowling pointed out that the President has already made some interesting appointments to his cabinet, but he has also been criticized for not having got rid of some people who were alleged to have been involved in corruption and state capture.

Ramaphosa, the Bishop said, is “a very personable man: he’s been running on the beach and meeting people; he has a wide expertise in all the languages (there are 11 official languages of South Africa), so he can communicate with ordinary folk on the ground in their own languages which is a tremendous strength for him”.

He noted that the new leader has a strong background in business, and said that the vexed mining Charter which has caused so much backlash and lack of investment from the big companies will hopefully be reformed and investments will start again.

“I think most people are cautiously hopeful” he said and he expressed his personal hope that he will also be open to meeting the major sectors of civil society.