Attacks on our constitutional order are the main issue, not Ramaphosa’s resignation

A news headline reads that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s allies believe “they [had] the numbers to mount a fight back” at the ANC NEC meeting, which had hardly started before being postponed. Some 80-odd people arrived for the meeting, most needing to be flown up from all parts of the country and accommodated in Johannesburg, but the president did not arrive. This wasted expenditure is at a time when the ANC cannot afford to pay its own staff.

Ramaphosa’s supporters believe he should not heed calls to resign. This is because they have “the numbers”. What they mean is that there is no need to engage with the findings of the Independent Panel headed by former Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo. The Ramaphosa supporters focus on whether he can rally ANC leaders and others who “count” in his support.

The report may be open to challenge, as more than one legal scholar has indicated, but that the panel did not believe the president’s evidence — saying that he was not telling the truth and believed there was a case to answer — surely needs a response beyond whatever level of support he can rally in the ANC NEC?

Ramaphosa is taking the report on review. Even if this report is flawed, there may be risks attached to investigations conducted by the South African Reserve Bank and South African Revenue Services and possibly others that have not yet been made public. Are these also not to be engaged if he has “the numbers”?

What these supporters of Ramaphosa are saying is that even though there may be these findings against him, the calls for his resignation ultimately depend on their power not on whether the findings are cogent, significant ethically, constitutionally, and in terms of loyalty to the state and even the integrity of the ANC. Power dynamics inside the ANC will determine what happens, irrespective of the law or reports of one or other kind.

The status of these findings at this time is determined by who and how many line up on one or other side in ANC internal politics. If most support Ramaphosa, that is all that is required, whether or not he is innocent or guilty of any wrongdoing. What level of validity the report has is by-the-by for these leaders, reported to be close to Ramaphosa. What matters to many or most of Ramaphosa’s supporters is his retaining internal support within the organisation and retaining his position. They fear losing theirs, if Ramaphosa were to resign. (I am not saying that this holds for all his supporters, for there are some who believe in his remaining in office — in good faith — to save the country and its democracy.)

It’s a question of supposedly twisting Ramaphosa’s arm not to resign. I’m not convinced that he was so keen on resigning. People are not pressurising him for ethical reasons, but because they fear that without him there, the ANC may have a very poor electoral showing and their own political futures and the wealth that comes with that will be endangered.

The only arguments coming close to ethical arguments are half-baked legal arguments which are not even articulated clearly, and suggestions that even if Ramaphosa has been tainted by this report, there are others who are far worse who will remain in leadership.

In other words, it becomes a question of who has done more wrong than others. Ramaphosa, it is claimed, has done less wrong than many others who are not being called upon to resign. For his supporters, quoted in media reports, that disposes of the ethical question — even if he has acted wrongfully — and it’s unnecessary for him to resign. Mondli Makhanya points to this as a persisting phenomenon in post-apartheid South Africa (behind a paywall):

“One of the terrible habits that the ANC cannot shake is the addiction to ‘whataboutism’, that practice of deflecting critiques or wrongs pointed out by referring to others’ flaws.

“This practice is usually the refuge of those who know they have a case to answer but also believe that their sins are lesser than those of their adversaries and others whose missteps have not been aired as much. It is one of the most classic forms of avoidance of responsibility.”

There’s something very crude, especially in a constitutional democracy so carefully crafted as ours was, about having the numbers supporting Ramaphosa raised as a way of erasing any arguments there may be for President Ramaphosa to resign. Some are doubtful when I say the ANC was not always like this. But people like Chief Albert Luthuli, Lilian Ngoyi, Walter and Albertina Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Ruth First, Chris Hani and many other heroic figures would not have traded in their values for the prospect of wealth.

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