Fact Check: Was Cyril Ramaphosa an apartheid collaborator?

Former President Nelson Mandela with (from left) Carl Niehaus, Steve Tshwete, Jacob Zuma, Cyril Ramaphosa, Andries Beyers and Moolman Mentz at discussions between the ANC and the Afrikaner Union. (Photo by Gallo Images/Media24 Archives)

By Rebecca Davis

20 Jun 2024

This claim was made by former president Jacob Zuma at an MK party press conference on 16 June.

https://youtu.be/mhjye3GcGXc

Zuma said the apartheid regime “could not have lasted even one day without black collaborators such as Ramaphosa”.

This is not the first time he has made such claims.

When Zuma announced the launch of the MK party in December 2023, he said that he would not campaign on behalf of a government led by “sellouts and apartheid collaborators”.

Is there any basis for Zuma’s beliefs in this regard?

There is absolutely no mention of Ramaphosa having collaborated with the apartheid regime in his most substantial biography, written by UCT politics professor Anthony Butler.

Butler has written that Ramaphosa’s political activism against apartheid began as a student, where he became part of a radical black consciousness organisation.

As a result of his activism, Ramaphosa was arrested by the Special Branch and couldn’t finish his studies. He was later also arrested following the 1976 Soweto uprising.

Butler has noted that the reason Ramaphosa was so prominent after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison was that he had played such a significant role in the internal opposition to apartheid, primarily as an activist within the trade union movement.

Butler has also said that Ramaphosa was, ideologically speaking, to the left of the South African Communist Party in the early 1990s.

Ramaphosa was also one of the Struggle activists who stayed in South Africa to battle the system from within, rather than going into exile, as others, including Jacob Zuma, had done.

From left: Carl Niehaus, Steve Tshwete, Jacob Zuma, Cyril Ramaphosa, Nelson Mandela, Andries Beyers and Moolman Mentz at discussions between the ANC and the Afrikaner Union. (Photo: Gallo Images / Media24 Archives)

There appears to be zero evidence to support the idea that Ramaphosa was an apartheid collaborator.

Where did this myth come from?

It may have something to do with the fact that Ramaphosa’s father, Samuel, was a policeman during apartheid, which Ramaphosa’s critics often mention.

Butler notes that both Ramaphosa and his brother were uncomfortable with their father’s job and were very happy when he gave it up before he reached retirement age.

What is more rarely mentioned is the fact that Zuma’s father was also a policeman during apartheid.

Furthermore, respected author and academic Jacob Dlamini pointed out in a 2015 column that historians have actually determined that Zuma’s ancestors collaborated with the British against the Zulu kingdom. They were rewarded by the British with the land on which Nkandla stands.

Zuma has also previously claimed that other political figures were apartheid collaborators.

In 2019, former Cabinet minister Derek Hanekom successfully sued Zuma for defamation for claiming that Hanekom had been an apartheid spy, which a court found was baseless.

Finally, let’s not forget that it was Zuma who appointed Ramaphosa as deputy president in 2014.

As former head of the ANC’s intelligence apparatus, Zuma would presumably have been in a good position to find out if Ramaphosa was indeed an apartheid collaborator.

It would have been unthinkable for Zuma to appoint such a person as his second-in-command. DM

Categories:

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

South Africa