Mr President, Act, and we will follow!

The new dawn has had an early death, and unfortunately, the cause of its expiry should be laid at the feet of the person who gave birth to the idea, Cyril Ramaphosa. Through negligence and dereliction of his duty in ensuring its vitality, Ramaphosa allowed the New Dawn to perish as a result of his hesitation to deal with severe threats to the infant idea of the New Dawn. These threats have come from those within the Tripartite Alliance, which includes the ANC, SACP and Cosatu. This hesitation has left many of his supporters (particularly Ramaphosa’s unofficial PR department in the Business Day headed by Peter Bruce) in limbo. Ramaphosa's praise singers have been contorting themselves in all sorts of ways to explain a 'long game' being played by Ramaphosa, while South Africa edges closer to the precipice.

Leading up to the Nasrec conference Ramaphosa has had some of the most significant amount goodwill give to any politician in South Africa’s history, especially stakeholders external to the ANC. Even amongst traditional supporters of a party like the Democratic Alliance, Ramaphosa has high favourability ratings. Several business leaders, analysts and journalists have gone to great lengths in presenting the figure of Ramaphosa as the 'Second Coming' of Nelson Mandela, and the only one able to Save South Africa. However, unlike Mandela, Ramaphosa faces different challenges to the late statesman, with most of these being internal to the ANC’s political alliance rather than the external challenges the party faced after it came into power.

When Ramaphosa ascended to the top of the ANC in December 2017, he went on a path of trying to unite the ANC, an organisation that has been falling apart for over two decades. Ramaphosa and his team refused to look at the Tripartite Alliance thoroughly to recognise that some parts have gone gangrenous, and therefore required nothing less than amputation. Instead, Ramaphosa went for a DIY approach of stitching the ANC’s zombified disintegrating body together. While this has kept the limbs from falling off the body, it is a temporary solution. The more substantial risk is that the infection spreads to the rest of the body. A limb that exemplifies this has been the ANC Youth League, which had its leadership recently disbanded for the second time in since 2013. The tripartite alliance has been losing its body parts for some time through various splinter groups in the past decade, including COPE and the EFF. Another significant loss was in the expulsion of NUMSA from COSATU, leading NUMSA to create a rival union federation, SAFTU.

The collapse of the alliance has become inevitable with the party leadership almost split in half since Ramaphosa narrowly won the Nasrec Elective Congress by 179 more votes than Jacob Zuma faction flag-bearer Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. While Dlamini-Zuma has acted magnanimously since her loss, working well with Ramaphosa in his cabinet, the other key players in the Jacob Zuma faction are not giving up ground to Ramaphosa. Considering the fate, they face should the ANC led government to seriously deal with corruption it is understandable that they will fight Ramaphosa tooth and nail for the control of the ANC. However, while Ramaphosa faces challenges from Zuma's acolytes, the fatal blow to his efforts of providing effective government leadership has been his union allies. The Cosatu affiliated Unions, the majority of which are in the public sector, have blocked crucial changes needed to fix the country’s fiscal position. Unions have been the major obstacle to deal with the overblown public sector wage bill and have been the reason Ramaphosa's government has been sloth-like in the restructuring of Eskom.

To say Ramaphosa is a disappointment is an understatement. Coming on the back of the tremendously rotten years of Zuma, Ramaphosa has had a shallow bar to get over, yet we have a lackluster performance from him and his team. Ramaphosa and his supporters like Gordhan keep speaking about a fightback campaign against them, one being pushed by the EFF and Zuma's proxies like ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule and Busisiwe Mkhwebane the Public Protector. Regardless of a fightback campaign, the indecision and lack action on the part of Ramaphosa and Gordhan are doing more damage to the country. This can be seen when it comes to the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), especially Eskom, which is the most significant risk to the stability of this nation. Ramaphosa and Gordhan appear to have been paralysed by the ideological holy cows of the alliance, preventing them from doing quick work in resolving institutions that have been a drain on public finances.

Gordhan and Ramaphosa were very loud and boastful in their rhetoric about the actions that would be taken on Eskom, with the most fundamental change being the breaking up of the utility into three parts. This restructuring appears to have been stalled with Ramaphosa and Gordhan halted in their tracks by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which helped bring the President into power. In terms of reducing the public wage bill, again, Ramaphosa’s executive has backpedalled. How has the fightback campaign of Mkhwebane, Magashule or the EFF played in the indecision by Ramaphosa with regards to Eskom or lack of action on the public wage bill? Do we blame Mkhwebane, Magashule and the EFF for the uncertainty being created by the proposed National Health Insurance Bill? How about Ramaphosa’s signing of the Credit Amendment Bill which may cost banks R20 billion while forcing people in small income brackets out of the legitimate loan market to Mashonisas (loan sharks) placing them under further economic duress. Ramaphosa’s administration has also been dithering in efforts to change the investment environment by dealing with low hanging fruit such as visa regime, as well as the challenges in bringing in high skilled labour blocked by cumbersome labour regulations.

As South Africans, we are yet to see deliberate, concrete and visionary steps being taken by Ramaphosa that is in the interest of the country even if they diverge from those of his friends in the alliance like Cosatu. The rest of the country which has believed in Ramaphosa a lot more than it trusts the ANC is left stranded while the President tries to appease unions. His appeasement is not aiding the economy or giving any confidence to investors or citizens. Ramaphosa is in a position of leadership. Should he start acting, decisively in a manner that is to the advantage and interests of South African he will find he has lot more support from the country that can counter any regressive forces in the tripartite alliance. Ramaphosa needs to act, and as long he does so for the best interest of the country those who believe in this country will follow him.

Sinethemba Zonke is a political risk analyst who comments on South Africa and African developments. He shares his views on his blog Prometheus Unbound