Forceful Ramaphosa faces his enemies head-on in departure from past January 8th speeches

12 Jan 2025

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s January 8th address on Saturday January 11 may well mark a moment in which the ANC became more direct in dealing with the political threats it opposes, with Ramaphosa taking on MK, the SACP and critics of the government of national unity.

Over the years ANC leaders have often appeared to almost ignore the conditions on the ground during their January 8th birthday addresses. Instead of focusing on the politics of the moment, the statement, formally written by the national executive committee, has often appeared to be a wish list of ideas the ANC has wanted to institute.

No longer.

On Saturday, addressing the Mandela Stadium in Khayelitsha, Ramaphosa focused very much on the politics of the moment.

He spent some time discussing the importance of the Tripartite Alliance, saying the alliance had “won many historic victories”, victories that had improved the lives of South Africans. It was a “living organism that developed and matured over almost a century, under different conditions, constantly adapting its role as the phases of the struggle changed”.

This is clearly in response to a decision by the South African Communist Party to campaign as an independent party in the local elections.

SACP deputy chairperson Thulas Nxesi had specifically referred to this in his address before Ramaphosa’s, saying that this decision was not a “Solly Mapaila decision”, but a decision of the SACP at a special congress (Mapaila himself was not present at the event, despite having been the public face of the SACP’s decision).

Ramaphosa was also direct in his response to the electoral losses in 2024, speaking at length about how, while the ANC was no longer in a majority, it nevertheless remained in control of the country. And he focused on how important it was for the ANC to have state power to continue to implement the National Democratic Revolution.

Then he made the following promise: The ANC will always have state power.

While this is quite a strong pledge, our politics is now in a place where it would be foolish to make any predictions about what will happen in the next elections in 2029.

He spoke at length about the need for renewal in the ANC, but he has done this many times, and voters showed that they did not buy it last year.

And it is worth noting that he did not promise that the ANC will regain a majority; simply that it will remain in a governing coalition.

Those who believe the current coalition (to be clear: the ANC working with the DA and others) is the best form of governance may see this as a prediction that the current coalition might last beyond the current term of government.

Ramaphosa spoke at length about the formation of the current coalition, saying: “The false notion that the character of the ANC and strategic objective of the NDR has been redefined by a single tactic by forming a broadly inclusive GNU is a distortion of the realities our movement faced, and should be dismissed out of hand.”

He also said the NEC had decided unanimously to speak to all of the parties that were willing to form a coalition, and that nine accepted the invitation (the full text of the January 8th Statement, written by the NEC, also uses the word “unanimously”).

Read more: The ANC ‘still leads’ despite existential crisis – key takeaways from Ramaphosa’s January 8th Statement

This may well reveal the state of the debate about the coalition within the ANC. While there has been no formal public statement about this decision, it is clear from comments by several people that they would have preferred the ANC to work with MK, the EFF and others.

Certainly, Ramaphosa felt he needed to use this moment to defend the decision.

Then there was the very direct attack on the ANC’s opponents, and presumably MK, which took so many votes from the ANC in the 2024 elections.

“Some of these parties masquerade as more radical than the ANC, but their revolutionary-sounding rhetoric cannot hide the reality that they have common cause with the forces opposing transformation,” he said.

This is a clear critique of MK, which, while claiming to be progressive, wants to abolish the Constitution and allow traditional leaders to make decisions for ordinary citizens in a different Parliament.

And Ramaphosa had a moment of deep reflection on why so many voters left the ANC, saying that “our healing lies in accepting the depth of dysfunction in our structures and among our members and leadership”.

He spoke at length about the need for renewal in the ANC.

Renewal a tired old tune

Unfortunately, he has done this many times, and voters showed that they did not buy it last year. As has been pointed out repeatedly, it will be difficult for Ramaphosa to continue to make this claim while including people implicated in State Capture in his government, and while the ANC includes such people among its MPs.

The Sunday Times revelation that ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula felt that using a massive private yacht to ferry himself to Robben Island last week was appropriate might well suggest nothing has really changed in the ANC.

Ramaphosa also spoke for some time about fixing local government, which the NEC’s January 8th document includes in the same section as fixing water and electricity supplies.

Clearly this is going to be a focus for the ANC, and coming ahead of the local elections this would be entirely sensible.

The problem is that this is largely out of the control of the ANC’s national leadership.

As is well known, it is many ANC councillors who are responsible for the failure of service delivery at this level, and examples abound where the national ANC has tried and failed to intervene.

Perhaps the most famous is in Ditsobotla, North West, where two different ANC factions claimed the mayoralty. As a result, residents suffered while the national ANC appeared powerless to intervene.

In Gauteng, councils have been governed by people from minority parties with support from the local and provincial ANC, despite the ANC adopting a principle that a mayor must come from the majority party.

Again, the national ANC has not been able to do anything.

All of this means that these efforts are likely to come to naught.

Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink

The fact that this period of our politics might well be defined by problems with the provision of water was confirmed by how long Ramaphosa spent talking about it, and by how much space it occupies in the NEC document.

While many voters were able to survive load shedding (and many more still endure load reduction), they may not survive suffering from no water. And this has the potential to lead to incredible anger among many South Africans.

But the unfortunate reality is that there are no easy fixes, the amount of money that is needed is huge, many councils have shown their incompetence in this area, and as Ferial Haffajee has explained, the ANC in Joburg has shown it is more interested in helping cadres than in supplying water.

Ramaphosa also condemned the “water mafia”, people who provide water tankers after allegedly sabotaging the legitimate water supplies.

While the formation of the national coalition after the ANC’s historic loss of support was probably the dominant dynamic of our politics last year, this year might be defined by the ANC’s full response to it.

But, since he has also regularly condemned the construction mafia, just because the President promises action, that doesn’t mean it’s wise to hold your breath waiting for prosecutions.

Near the beginning of Ramaphosa’s speech he made it clear that growing the economy is a major priority, saying the ANC needs to “improve the ability of the economy to create jobs… and to ensure we improve the lives of our people”.

The NEC document sets out several bullet points about how this is to be done – through public employment programmes, industrialisation, a focus on agriculture, manufacturing and tourism, the “promotion of domestic business and labour” and through the digital economy.

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be anything new here. As would be expected, the ANC, still the broadest church in our politics, is not able to produce anything radical.

As a result, our economy will be stuck in the “dangerous middle” for some time to come. And a result of that will be even more youth unemployment, and no real change.

While the formation of the national coalition after the ANC’s historic loss of support was probably the dominant dynamic of our politics last year, this year might be defined by the ANC’s full response to it.

In other words, shocks might well come from inside the ANC as it has not fully understood the scale of its loss.

The text and tone of Ramaphosa’s speech might well be an indication of the true balance of power in the party, and of how difficult the current situation really is. DM

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Renewal a tired old tune

Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink