The unceremonious removal of ex-President Jacob Zuma in early 2018 was followed by the jubilant introduction of Cyril Ramaphosa as his replacement. The bourgeois media and liberal commentators were quick to hail him as the Saviour of South Africa’s failing economy; thereby adding to a general sense of relief that the country finally got rid of the corrupt Zuma administration. Soon hereafter, the catch word ‘Ramaphoria’ started doing the rounds. The word plays on the euphoria that accompanied Ramaphosa’s presidency. Here, one should be mindful of two possible scenarios:   (i) were people really euphoric about Ramaphosa or more relieved that the vilest forms of corruption have been eliminated?  (ii) The coining of names and its popularisation (especially by the bourgeois media) is a sophisticated and old propaganda ploy aimed at duping the labouring masses into accepting a predetermined narrative.  Words such as ‘Native Representative Council’ and ‘Tri-cameral Parliament’ were also used to trick the labouring masses into believing that these bogus institutions were their institutions, designed to serve them. Likewise ‘Ramaphoria’ creates the impression that Ramaphosa represents the interests of all and everyone should welcome his presidency. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 From trade unionist to business tycoon

Cyril Ramaphosa’s humble beginnings as an astute trade union organiser and negotiator, stands in stark contrast to his career as a paid politician and business tycoon. One of the Mandela favourites, he quickly rose to prominence within the ANC and served as one of the party’s top negotiators at Kempton Park. It was here where a negotiated political settlement saw the entrenchment of white monopoly capital and privilege through the constitutional protection of private property. In exchange, Ramaphosa and his struggle compatriots received a substantial share of white monopoly capital from the master’s table through the implementation of lucrative Black Economic Empowerment policies. Incidentally, Ramaphosa who has proven to be one of its most favoured beneficiaries played an integral role in formulating the first set of BEE programmes. After being side-lined as presidential candidate by the ascendency of Thabo Mbeki as the successor to Mandela, Ramaphosa entered business on a full time basis. He served as director on various blue chip company boards and is a shareholder in most of them as well. It is this new-found opulence that saw him excelling financially as one of Africa’s wealthiest people with an estimated worth of US$450 million. [Norimitsu Onishi, My Times, internet article 15/02/2018]

The Marikana Albatross

It was as one of the directors of the Lonmin platinum mine that the true nature of Ramaphosa was exposed. His personal wealth became so interlocked with that of his generous bourgeois compatriots, that he had no choice but to betray the self-same working class he had built and organized a few decades ago. Although he was absolved from involvement in the massacre of 34 mineworkers, let us evaluate his words on that fateful day and judge for ourselves. He perceived the “wildcat” strike of these exploited workers as “dastardly criminal and must be characterized as such.” He added, “In line with this characterization, there needs to be concomitant action to address this situation.” [Norimitsu Onishi, My Times, internet article 15/02/2018]  Indeed, a master negotiator, fully understanding the power of words, Mr Ramaphosa ensured that his criticism of the strike could not implicate him in the subsequent deaths of 34 people and the resultant trauma on their families. After all, he had to maintain the semblance of still being a comrade! Dastardly and criminal? These are harsh words, meaning acts so vile, it should be addressed through punishment. How else are criminals treated? What Ramaphosa is cowardly shying away from, is calling the workers criminals to their face. But such is the nature of political opportunists. After calling their actions ‘criminal’, he proceeded with his sophistry and invoked the might of the law to deal with these dastardly criminal elements. His masters could not have been more pleased with him for rationalising their brutal exploitation of workers and safe-guarding their economic interests now that he shared a piece of the pie. It should be added that this is a strategy they employed in South Africa with equal success when they co-opted white Afrikanerdom into a predominantly British-owned economy not so long ago in our history. Let us quickly remind Mr Ramaphosa of the real dastardly criminal elements, as he seems to suffer from political amnesia, caused no doubt by a healthy dose of lucrative company shares. It was British imperialism, aided by racist herrenvolkism, that raped and plundered SA through dastardly criminal acts of land dispossession (without compensation!), political oppression and suppression, as well as the crudest form of economic exploitation that generated the super profits on which white monopoly capitalists built their empires. Let us also remind Mr Ramaphosa that apart from his ilk, the labouring masses have not seen the redress of any of these historical and present atrocities perpetrated against them. In fact, under your Party’s watch, Mr President, two innocent children recently died as a direct result of dire poverty stricken conditions by drowning in human excrement in a place where they were supposed to be safe and receive an education.

Ramaphoria or Ramaphobia?

The working class is made to believe that President Ramaphosa will provide a turn-around strategy for SA’s failing economy. The positive response of the market to his presidency, coupled with the economic growth in the agricultural sector, the stabilization of the Rand and his fight against corruption, are all advanced as reasons for his new-found popularity. As far as the corruption clean-up argument goes and truth be told, the Devil would have appeared more saintly compared to the Zuma administration! Interestingly enough, for most of Zuma’s tenure as President, then Deputy President Ramaphosa remained absolutely quiet on all the administration’s excesses. Only after it became clear that Zuma was backing a different candidate to succeed him as president, did the ‘anti-corruption hero persona’ emerge from Ramaphosa’s side. He even went so far as to declare his suspicion of Zuma’s guilt in the Fezekile Kuzwayo/Zuma rape case, after keeping quiet for so long. [Herman Mashaba, News24 internet article 14/12/2017] Such, once again, is the nature of political opportunists. In addition to all of these, let us spell out why ‘Ramaphoria’ is dangerous and should be regarded as ‘Ramaphobia’ by the working class. Mr Ramaphosa represents the interests of the bourgeois class. He has personally sided with them as demonstrated by the Marikana atrocity. His solution for a new prosperous SA is a capitalist economy. Before looking at the current economic reality, let us ask Mr Ramaphosa what economy we have been living under for at least the past century, if not a capitalist economy? Let us also remind Mr Ramaphosa that this economy was built on the backs of the exploited labouring masses that he could so easily characterize as acting in a ‘dastardly criminal’ manner. But more importantly, thanks to him and his ilk, it’s an economy that has not seen the redistribution of wealth in the interest of the labouring masses, or the redistribution of dispossessed land to its rightful owners. Worsening this already tragic state of affairs, under the watch of the ANC, SA has officially grown into the most unequal country in the world. (Ironically, in the face of this abject poverty, Mr Ramaphosa readily accepted a R 700 000.00 increase in his salary, making him one of the top earning politicians globally.) As if the aforementioned proof of the dismal failure of the capitalist economy for the working class is not absurd enough, the workers are blamed for the negative growth of the economy! Stringent labour laws, low productivity, inadequate education, industrial unrest and service delivery protests are all cited as reasons for low investor confidence. They remain conspicuously silent on how after Apartheid, the personal riches of the top layers of society, including the new black elite, have grown at the expense of starving and increasingly under-resourced communities, who after 24 years of self-indulgent ANC rule, had no other choice but to take to the streets. Today the onslaught of the Bourgeois state continues unabated. We have seen attempts to undermine hard-won worker rights through the proposed amendment of labour laws which could translate into limiting industrial action and sanctioning starvation wages, among others. The Mining Charter is also under review after it emerged from the bosses in, a resounding jeremiad, that poor communities would benefit too much and their precious investors would stand to lose too much. (One wonders if such a loss to them would reflect in one luxury yacht, penthouse or private jet less) Incredulously, more than a century of solely benefitting from these mines is not enough! What Ramaphosa and his ilk do not tell us is that under the capitalist economy, wealth is becoming more concentrated in the hands of a privileged few. It is also well observed that in the poorest regions of the world, especially in the so-called pro-free market models, poverty is not eradicated but actually intensified. In an inexorable drive to become more competitive and profitable, companies either further suppress labour costs or employ new technologies to replace labour-intensive ones, leading to large scale job losses and an inability of the economy to compensate for job losses with new job opportunities. It is ultimately, an economy designed to serve the interest of private individuals who generate maximum profit through exploiting the social labour of the working class. Environmental destruction, protectionism, austerity measures (i.e. punishing the poor) to enforce fiscal discipline, fabricated wars (i.e. to secure environmentally destructive commodities like oil/petrochemicals and to create a market for the sale of military hardware), xenophobia, national debt repayment schemes and increasing economic speculation across world markets (that does not add to real production at all) have become standard features of this so called Free Market Economy. This is an economic system that flagrantly disregards not only the global working class, but earth herself.

Let us not be hoodwinked by Ramaphoria. Ramaphosa is not our saviour! The working class is capable of freeing itself from the bondage that they are kept in by the oppressor bourgeois class. Only through their own initiatives, based on principled and programmatic struggle in the interest of the working class and the landless peasantry, can SA move towards a democracy for all its people. Aluta continua!