Cyril Ramaphosa, victor in South Africa’s recent presidential election and head of the African National Congress, is celebrating his win and the peaceful transition of power from his predecessor Jacob Zuma. But he must equally be aware that there is a daunting challenge that awaits him in the realm of economic reform, institutional reinvigoration and breaking from a past of political corruption that has hobbled the country’s prospects for much-needed growth. To begin with, the ANC won just under 58% of the vote, while the main opposition Democratic Alliance won about 21%, the Economic Freedom Fighters 11%, and the 45 smaller parties together won almost 11%. That is a considerable proportion of overall votes for the ANC, but nevertheless marks a disconcerting secular decline in its tally, which was as high as 69% in the 2004 national elections but slid steadily downward to almost 66% in 2009 and to 62% in 2014. The dwindling popularity of the party that swept gloriously to power in 1994 following the defeat of apartheid, has been coterminous with the rise of a corrupt political elite that indulged in what is now widely recognised as “state capture” — rent-seeking built on the marketisation of the South African state. Given that Mr. Zuma, who stepped down in 2018 in the wake of corruption scandals, allowed this culture of venality to flourish, Mr. Ramaphosa will have to apply a scalpel to the ANC itself: trim the Cabinet and oust those associated with illicit dealings.
The President will also have to be deft in terms of steering the economy through choppy waters. The rate of unemployment is now at 27%. This raises the already high levels of stress on tottering public finances and social welfare programmes, which must cater to at least 17 million people. A positive step forward here would be for Mr. Ramaphosa to deliver on his promise to tackle the “public patronage” system, at the heart of which are the inefficiency ridden state-owned enterprises. In his victory speech he vowed to end corruption “whether some people like it or not”. Indeed, no task is more urgent than this, for it is only by stemming the leaks in public finances that the government can hope to pump funds back into the public services for education, health, and social security. This in turn could directly improve the welfare of the poorest South Africans, mostly youth, who have relatively few marketable vocational skills and opportunities, and are left to fend for themselves in the private sector. While Mr. Ramaphosa has made a decent start by changing the leadership of the tax authority and the national prosecutor’s office, the danger for the administration lies in the realm of politics. To deliver on the promise of economic growth and good governance, Mr. Ramaphosa must stand ready to power through any resistance to reform by the ANC old guard, some of them Mr. Zuma’s avowed allies.
