For years, I’ve been a silent observer of the World Economic Forum (WEF), reading about it on the internet, editing reams of copy on it or watching it on TV. But one question has always remained in my mind. What drives thousands of people each year to a small alpine town in Switzerland to live out Professor Klaus Schwab’s dream, who founded the forum in 1971?
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After traveling almost 13,000 kilometers from the tip of Africa to Davos, a semblance of an answer began to emerge.
The answer was not to be found in the sub-zero temperatures that left the entire body numb with cold nor in Responsive and Responsible Leadership, the theme driving the WEF Annual Meeting 2017. Instead it was to be found in the Congress Centre, or on the streets and hotels of Davos-Klosters.
It was to be found among the people – the 3,000 delegates that gathered for the event and the thousands of support staff.
The draw card – the opportunity to mingle and be seen with the most influential and powerful people in the world. Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, crossed my path several times at Davos. Mauritius President Dr Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, after sharing her plans for attracting investors to her country on a cold winter’s night, agreed to a photo with me.
Singer and songwriter Shakira shared her passion for early child development advising us that “today’s babies will drive tomorrow’s business. Their capacity to contribute will shape tomorrow’s societies, will solve tomorrow’s problems”.
Anne-Sophie Mutter, one of the world’s most famous violinists, entertained the crowds. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Finance Minister of Nigeria and Board Chair of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, discussed plans to immunize up to 300 million more children all over the world by 2020.
The allure of Davos is that it gives delegates a platform to discuss the most pressing issues of our time, such as the refugee crisis, climate change and can-women-have-it-all?
It offers an arena to do business deals with the richest, to form new contacts and exchange business cards. It provides purveyors a glimpse into where the world stands, shifts in geopolitics and the ironies and contradictions of the world. It allows those present to see who controls the vast majority of wealth and intellectual capital and how this has changed.
WEF 2017 was a world in which the largest bankers, infamous for the financial crisis, such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, could be heard offering their views on Trump making America and stock markets great again, while Ugandan-born Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director at Oxfam, was decrying that eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, according to a new report published by the agency.
It was an arena that brought into stark contrast the plight of Africa, and the developed world when simultaneously it hosted a panel discussion with CNBC Africa on Powering Africa, while meters away, some of the leading minds in technology were debating what role artificial intelligence should play in our futures; and that the 48 countries that make up sub-Saharan Africa generate almost the same amount of electricity as Spain.
Davos 2017 was a gathering where UK’s Prime Minister Theresa May declared that Britain’s decision to leave the European Union was not a rejection of its friends in Europe but simply a vote to restore its “parliamentary democracy and national self-determination. A vote to take control and make decisions for ourselves”. Juxtapose this with Xi Jinping’s attendance. Jinping, the first Chinese president to attend WEF, led the country’s largest-ever delegation to the ski-resort town to make a statement that China wants to assume a global leadership role as the world struggles with isolationism, populism and polarization. In a speech at the event, he stated: “It is true that economic globalization has created new problems, but this is no justification to write economic globalization off completely. Rather, we should adapt to and guide economic globalization, cushion its negative impact, and deliver its benefits to all countries and all nations.”
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– Vanek is news editor of CNBC Africa and CNBCAfrica.com; she lives and breathes business and financial news, and is now slowly developing a passion for artificial intelligence.

Why The Richest And Most Powerful Go To Davos

We meet Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf on the sidelines of the 25th African Union summit in June in Johannesburg, South Africa. With the theme this year focused on women’s empowerment and the role women can play in advancing Africa’s development, the summit was well-represented by African presidents including Johnson-Sirleaf, the continent’s first female president.
We meet the pint-sized powerhouse at the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce – where the Liberian delegation was wooing South African investors to Liberia – flanked by her leading men in investment promotion, the Minister of Finance and the Head of the National Investment Commission.
Despite a heavy diary weighed down by a slew of presidential engagements, Johnson-Sirleaf is keen to not let the opportunity to sell the Liberian investment case to potential investors slip by.
“We’re very well-endowed with natural resources. We have an abundance of iron ore, gold, forest resources that represent almost half of all the biodiversity in West Africa, an unbroken coastline that gives a marine economy, and of course agriculture…we are well on our way in rebuilding this economy,” says the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
It’s a hard sell. Liberia continues to feature amongst the world’s poorest countries. The civil war that engulfed the country for 14 years, following a coup d’ etat in 1980, not only claimed thousands of lives but also stole the country’s economic potential. Economic infrastructure was destroyed, foreign direct investment ground to a halt, capital made a beeline for other markets, and government coffers dried up. Liberia’s economy came to a standstill.
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But Johnson-Sirleaf is adamant this is not an economy to be overlooked.
“The Minister of Finance has been working with the World Bank and they tell me that we have moved from negative growth of 0.4% to 1.4%. I’ve told them quite clearly that I don’t agree with those projections. In the next two years we will be growing at least 6 to 7%. There is no reason why we can’t hit double digits in the next 10 years.”
Johnson-Sirleaf claimed the presidential seat in 2005 on a campaign card that promised to rebuild the war-torn country. She held onto her seat in 2011 following her re-election into her second and final term. But in the home run of her presidential race, the Ebola outbreak hit the country and her leadership was tested more than ever before.
“This was a strange disease. We ran away. Our people ran away. Nobody knew what it was. We were all frightened. So we must expect other people were frightened including those from the African Union. But as soon we, Liberians, took it upon ourselves to step up and fight this, others saw our courage and when they joined us, they joined us with force.”
Johnson-Sirleaf insists assistance of the African Union was key in helping Liberia wrestle Ebola to the ground. But Liberia does not enjoy the luxury of resting on its laurels, with news of fresh Ebola cases, and given that it shares borders with Guinea and Ivory Coast, where new infections are still being reported as recently as June.
Johnson-Sirleaf has held onto the Presidential seat for almost a decade. Her run comes to an end this year. Asked whether her political legacy has lived up to the title that always precedes her of being the first female president in Africa, she says: “Only history and you can judge me. I have done my best.”

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The Blood, Sweat And  Fear That Shook  A Nation

It was the dual meaning of a few words that tripped off the tongue of the Somaliland foreign minister as he talked about the economic future of Africa that turned my blood cold.
“Africa shouldn’t miss the boat,” says Mohamed B Yonis.
The stark image that stabbed into my mind was that of Africans risking their lives on leaky boats crossing the Mediterranean in the desperate hope of a new life in Europe – a journey that has taken 2,000 lives this year. A new life? The odds are against it; even the survivors are likely to end up as sweated labour at best; trafficked labor at worst.
I was even more upset to see a magazine at the conference with a survey suggesting a large number of Africans say they would risk the tricky crossing of the Mediterranean even if it cost them their lives; a sad statistic close to the weeping heart of Africa.
A sobering thought amid the gathering of the rich and powerful in Cape Town where there were many signs of light and growth in Africa. Among the 1,200 delegates were investment fund managers from across the world.
“We like what we see and are here to invest,” says one partner of a $68-billion New York investment fund.
Infrastructure is likely to be the big business of the future; in the past, the World Bank estimated Africa needs at least $93 billion a year spent in infrastructure. Those in the know in Cape Town say this is barely enough to touch the sides of the infrastructure gap.
Former head of South African intelligence, Moe Shaik, has been doing his bit with the pan-African investment operation he is running for the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). Shaik says he gathered $404 million (R5 billion) in investments into everything from roads to oil and gas pipelines in the last year. Shaik also says the DBSA contributed $150 million in raising $750 million for a sovereign wealth fund in Angola that will be used to build roads and infrastructure as well as making plans for a new coal fired power station at Mamba, near the Zambezi River, in southern Zambia. He believes state coffers can no longer afford infrastructure.
“Government needs to create an environment where capital can come in and build. But African governments also need to set up mechanisms where they can supervise infrastructure projects in their country so they can be done properly,” he says.
Patrice Motsepe, Africa’s 14th richest man, worth an estimated $2.3 billion according to FORBES, agrees.
“I have always emphasized that we need to bring the private sector in and that the partnership be a partnership between the government, the investment communities, both local and international, and that always gives me comfort that these projects make sense, that they are sustainable,” he says. “The environment has been put in place and we are making progress in Africa in comparison with various other investment countries.”
The head of state in the host country, South Africa, believes the continent is well on the way.
“There is the issue of infrastructure, all types of infrastructure that is actually changing the face and the landscape of the continent. This is what we are attracting. Those huge sums of money; we were therefore discussing the financing of these projects, how ready the projects are; some of the projects have been presented and are now ready to be financed and there is an interest of all financing institutions both locally and internationally,” says President Jacob Zuma.
With the optimism in Cape Town came caution. There are still doubts about political stability and corruption. Now, I have heard corruption compared to many things down the years, but never to crocodiles in the Kenyan bush.
“You know, when wildebeest migrate north to greener pastures in the Masai Mara game reserve, the crocodiles lie in wait for them in the rivers. So the wildebeest have to know where to cross otherwise they are going to lose a leg. The crocodiles are corruption,” says Bharat Thakrar, the head of East African advertising giant, Scangroup.
“It used to be limited to the police and small government offices, but now corruption is creeping into private business in Africa.”
Blair Glencorse, is fighting corruption with his NGO Accountability Lab in Liberia and was at WEF Africa.
“Where there needs to be enforcement, the key issue is to make sure it is part of a larger strategy to build transparency, open up information and build channels of exchange between citizens and governments – so it is not politicized. There are countries of Africa which are making some progress along these lines like Botswana and Ghana,” he says.
Hope and crocodiles collide; Africa has its work cut out before WEF Africa in Rwanda next year.
<h4>The Fresh Face of $2 Billion</h4>
Africa is changing fast and has a fresh face. Ten years ago, it would have been unthinkable; 20 years ago, unimaginable in an often patriarchal Africa. One of the freshest, not to mention powerful, faces at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa in Cape Town runs $2 billion in investment at the age of 38.
Ngugi Kiuna grew up in Nakuru in western Kenya, the son of a managing director of a company selling tractors and a mother who sold animal feed. He went to boarding school in England and studied chemical engineering at Imperial College, London, before earning a PhD in composite structures of aerospace applications.
In August 2013, Kiuna became the head of investment banking for Africa at Rand Merchant Bank. He runs $2 billion in assets in Nigeria, Kenya, Namibia, Ghana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia Angola and Botswana.
“Most of the countries we deal with are single B rated by the risk people. We also do a lot of work with private entities. The sovereign element is there and if you have it there is less of a risk. The sweet spot for us is three- to five-year investments. Off our own balance sheet, we can do longer, with the support of development finance, up to 10 years,” he says.
It means Kiuna oversees the financing of aircraft for Air Namibia, the building of roads in Angola and investment in locomotives in Mozambique. It is investing in Cenpower – a new 300MW gas power plant – in Ghana. In Kenya, it has helped tie up a deal, this year, to plough $350 million into a new 450-kilometer oil pipeline between Mombasa and Nairobi. It will take over from the old pipeline that’s been pumping oil since the 1960s.
Most of the people Kiuna meets, in his extensive travels across the continent, are old enough to be his father.
“I was with the minister of finance in Gabon, we were talking about the government infrastructure plan and strategy about borrowing, you could see all along there was something in his mind he wasn’t comfortable with. I said ‘minister, I know I look too young…’ He burst out laughing. I said I am not as young as I look, it broke the ice. After that, the nature of the conversation changed,” he says.
“I think people are generally embracing but obviously some are surprised by how young I am, but people are much more open minded to the younger generation. I think it is also a function of the technology age, you have younger people becoming billionaires these days.”
At WEF in Cape Town, Kiuna rubbed shoulders with many others with billions to invest.
“We saw there is continued buzz and interest in Africa; a lot of new people, new faces and new companies ready to invest. There is also a lot more intra-Africa dialogue; people talking about projects, people collaborating on projects. The amount of trade in Africa is nowhere near what it should be. Thirdly, power in Africa, we need to get that right and let’s hope we can. There have been power projects too big and too complicated to execute. So, we need to scale down projects to a size where it’s easier to be financed and done.”
His greatest fear for Africa?
“Political stability and transparency; these are all matters we have to get right… The biggest fear is around transparency around elections cycles in Africa. The recent elections in Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia and Namibia show we are getting there.”
“Wherever I travel on the continent, I am always inspired by the number of people who have started their own business. I dedicate what I do to them.”
Words wise beyond their years.
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Crocodiles,  Money And Hope

There were fewer miners at the Mining Indaba this year and more mining service companies to make up the numbers among 7,000 delegates. Everyone is trying to cut costs as commodity prices tumble.
“It’s been a lot quieter this year,” admits one of the organizers.
“The investors are there, but the group is getting smaller and smaller,” says one delegate who asked not to be named.
“I think the opportunities are like the gold rush of 1849 in America,” says Robin Saunders, the head of Clearbrook Capital, an investment company looking to sink billions into African mining on behalf of rich families in Europe and the Middle East.
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There were plenty of strident young mining nations from across Africa selling their minerals. This optimism couldn’t disguise the pain of the hosts; decades of battering and disinvestment leaves South Africa, where once 40% of the world’s mining was carried out, struggling to cling onto 5%, according to KPMG.
Investors are fighting shy of South Africa because of three big problems: power, rather the lack of it, strikes and fears over regulation.
The power shortages that have plagued most mines in South Africa has cost Harmony – the country’s third largest producer – 50 kilograms of gold in the last quarter to December 31,  worth around $1.87 million, according to CEO Graham Briggs. It meant production at Harmony fell 10%, in the last quarter of 2014, to 271,963 oz.
“What happens is we have communication from Eskom that we have to cut our consumption by 10% or sometimes as much as 20%. This means we have to stop milling and hoisting, which impacts on our production,” says Briggs.
Like most large South African mines, Harmony is in a cleft stick. It consumes 2,600MW at its South African operations – enough to power a city and more than half the output of a large coal-fired power station. This means, like most mines in South Africa, it can’t risk the capital to build a generator or power plant large enough for its needs.
South African mining minister, Ngoako Ramatlhodi, just over a year into the job, sees himself as riding to the rescue. Even so, he brushed over the glaring power problem; merely talking about private power producers and getting power from the Grand Inga dam, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 2023. It could have been 2093 for all the difference it makes to the mines.
Ramatlhodi’s speech was full of reassuring words for foreign investors: the rule of law was to be respected; the government was prepared to get tough on violent wildcat strikes and the country was open for business.
He wasn’t so clear cut on the regulation front. There was plenty of confusion over the amendments to the Minerals and Petroleum and Resources Development Act – the law that governs mining that is going back and forth through Parliament. President Jacob Zuma sent the amendments back saying they were unconstitutional.
One of the bones of contention is the proposal of so called developmental pricing – that is, lower prices for commodities like iron ore and coal to help stimulate the South African economy. A year ago the miners negotiated so called ‘mine gate prices’ similar to import parity pricing, where transport costs are taken into consideration, leaving the producer with a fair profit margin.
The problem is there is a strong voice within the ruling party for developmental pricing to be written into law. If so, the minister could be handed the power to declare minerals strategic; meaning miners would have to accept government prices and have to ask state permission to export. It could bring down the price of coal for Eskom, with it the cost of electricity, which is likely to be popular with voters.
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But among foreign investors it is likely to go down like a lead balloon laden with ten tons of coal. They are likely to see it as the state tinkering with the economy, laced with uncertainty, at a time when investors are looking for long term stability.
“It doesn’t feel like we are getting clarity,” says Wickus Botha, a mining analyst with EY.
“How long is it going to take to get these regulations through Parliament? It is not going to happen overnight. For the next two years it is going to be very difficult.”
In many other countries in Africa, these fears are far away. Many miners are making hay from Abidjan to Maputo as the hunt for investors overcomes shortcomings in infrastructure and financial systems.
One of them is Mark Bristow, the CEO of Randgold Resources, who has spent 20 years building mines everywhere from Mali to the Democratic Republic of Congo. His company’s results, released at the Mining Indaba, shows this penchant for the byways of African mining is paying off. In its Q4 figures, the company recorded record year-on-year production, up 26%, to 1,147,414oz in a company that is debt free and has paid a dividend at a time when the gold price is falling and most mining companies have forgotten what a dividend is. Bristow says his company is making a 20% real return on investment and is looking to invest in South Sudan and Kenya.
“Risk is in the eye of the beholder, as long as you have a good relationship with the stakeholders it is fine,” he says.
Elsewhere, Côte d’Ivoire, famous for agriculture, has a golden dream. The West African nation plans to open a gold mine every year for the next five years as part of its economic diversification, according to mining minister Jean-Claude Brou.
Gold mining in Cote d’Ivoire has grown rapidly in five years. In 2009, the country produced seven tons of gold; in 2014, it mined 18.6 tons. The country plans to increase production to 30 tons in the next five years.
“That is a very conservative target,” says Brou.
One last cautionary tale for African mining; there was a lot of talk about the increased mining royalties in Zambia and Zimbabwe and the threat they pose to investment.
From the gloom came a voice of sweet moderation from Ghana. The West African nation mined 4.4 million oz of gold in 2014 earning 40% of the country’s foreign currency.
In 2006, Ghana imposed a 5% royalty and mining minister Nii Osah Mills says his country plans to keep it at that rate for at least another 10 years.
“We were thinking recently of increasing the royalty, but we decided against it because we felt it would be disruptive to mining. So, no one is fleeing Ghana and that is a vote for us,” says Mills.
A dash of pragmatism that could help Ghana keep its place as the world’s 9th largest gold producer.

Four Frantic Days  Full Of Fear

The annual Mining Idaba in Cape Town attracted more than 7,000 delegates to South Africa’s mother city. Many were positive about the prospect for growth and investment in mining across the African continent, but concerns remain when it comes to investing in South Africa’s troubled sector.
Perceptions were not helped in early February, with a number of strikes across South Africa’s major platinum companies. The labor unrest and above-inflation wage increases seem to be a major turn off for both investors in company stocks and companies, and investors looking to put their money into exploration and mine development.
Mining’s contribution to South Africa’s economy has been falling. The South African Chamber of Mines said that the industry has shrunk by about 1% each year, in the period from 2001 to 2008. This decline came at a time when there was a global commodities boom. In the same period, the top 20 mining economies recorded average growth of 5% a year. Still, mining continues to play an important role in South Africa’s economy.
In addition to labor concerns, worries about the availability of adequate power and an uncertain policy environment persist.
Susan Shabangu, the minister of the department of minerals and energy (DMR), has said that amendments to the 2002 Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) should be finalized in the first half of the year.
Concerns among business remain, in particular, with regard to a plan to identify some minerals mined in the country as strategic. Other proposals that caused much angst last year is one which would have companies seek permission from the minister to change ownership of controlling stakes in companies.
It is also proposed that the downstream processing of some of the minerals mined in South Africa would become obligatory. Government too, if the proposal remains unchanged, would be entitled to appoint two directors to the board of any company engaging in the development of a new energy project in South Africa.
“Uncertainty must be removed in order for us to set a starting foundation for new investment. The free market basis of our founding constitution is of paramount importance. While we understand the need for legislation to evolve and improve over time, certain proposed amendments to the MPRDA create significant challenges for long-term investment in the mining sector,” says the former president of The Chamber of Mines and CEO of Anglo American, Mark Cutifani in the Chamber’s annual report.
He went on to say that companies and government have to work together to find solutions—solutions which support further investment, rather than deter it.
The South African government, like many across a number of resource-rich African countries, wants a greater say in the mining sector. Already the MPRDA obliges mining companies to have transferred 26% of their equity, or output, to black investors by this year.
Asked if he believes mining companies will have been successful in this regard, the deputy director general responsible for mineral policy and promotion, Mosa Mabuza said: “The Department has no reason to believe that any mining company is not working towards this objective. We have commissioned an evaluation of transformation progress broadly and the outcome will indicate the extent of this progress.”
The results of an audit of companies’ BBE status and their fulfilment of the Mining Charter is expected by the end of this year.
Some companies still fall short on the equity and output aspects of the Charter, but many have been successful in sourcing goods and services from empowered companies.
There have been a number of empowerment deals among engineering and project management companies, often involving black-managed private equity funds. This is perhaps a better way of funding deals. In the past, some stakes had been bought through share transfers and in instances where stock prices fell and dividends disappeared, empowerment partners were left with debt rather than equity.
Investors may be wary of putting their money into costly mine developments but there are multinational engineering and project management companies coming into the mining space. They want a foothold in supply services and engineering. In addition to business in South Africa, they have their eyes on the developing mining, and oil and gas sectors in Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Namibia.

The Problem With Sharing is Glaring

The lines were drawn across a giant map of Africa at this gathering of the great and the good in business, in Cape Town. The expensive business of pouring billions of dollars into making these lines on a map into trade routes plied by high-speed planes, trains and trucks, will make-or-break of the African dream.
More than 1,000 delegates arrived at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Cape Town, on May 9, to discuss the practicalities of building infrastructure to nurture the emerging economies of Africa. It is a herculean task, to say the least, with the World Bank estimating the continent needs $93 billion to complete the job. Experts say the cost may be much more.
Plans have been drawn up for trade corridors traversing the continent. They include: a swifter trade route between oil-rich Angola and South Africa; plus, an ambitious plan to improve the rails, roads, ports and airports between Cape Town and Cairo—a dream that is likely to have the old colonialist, Cecil John Rhodes, chuckling in his grave in the Matopos Hills, near Bulawayo in Zimbabwe.
“It is ironic that democratic African nations, that have turned their back on colonialism, are trying to revive a plan hatched by the colonialist Cecil Rhodes more than a century ago,” says Ebrahim Patel, South Africa’s economic development minister.
To execute these plans, experts have drawn up a list of 50 priority projects that will be whittled down to 15 in the next six months. They include the expansion of the Grand Inga Dam hydroelectric plan in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the boosting of infrastructure to help extract gas from the waters off the coast of Mozambique.
“It is a wonderful vision but getting it done is something else,” says Nick Chism, the global head for Infrastructure at KPMG, who has been studying infrastructure worldwide for 20 years.
Chism believes a shortage of skills and finance are likely to be among the biggest hurdles. He also warns there could be tension between nations, before the list of 15 projects is decided, over what is built where.
“The idea is to build infrastructure in hubs, that is, a good airport in one country, a good port in the neighboring country and so on. As you can imagine, each country wants the best of everything built in their own backyard,” says Chism.
Despite these warnings and the dismissal by critics of WEF as a mere talk shop, there was optimism among the millionaires, entrepreneurs, technocrats and government officials, who gathered in Cape Town.
“I think things are starting to gel. We are in a lot better space than we were a decade ago,” says Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s minister of national planning.
Money, in a shallow world capital market, is likely to be the most insurmountable object. But Nigerian entrepreneur, Tony Elumelu, who invested recently in a $300 million power plant at home and put money into the launch of Rwanda’s new commodity exchange, sees hope.
“The best of Africa’s entrepreneurs are seeking investment opportunities in the continent… If we invest in Africa, we will get others to follow,” says Elumelu.
Folorunsho Alakija, reputed to be the richest woman in Africa, with a personal fortune, estimated by FORBES, of $600 million, has made her money through the license to the rich Agbami oil block off the coast of Nigeria. The block has 1.2 billion barrels of oil.
“We shouldn’t be waiting for handouts from other countries; we should get together to make our way forward, by ourselves, to give our people pride… There are plenty of opportunities in agriculture. Nigeria is importing so much rice. I do not think we should be importing anything from anyone,” says Alakija.
If optimism were cash, Africa’s infrastructure problems could be sorted before WEF reconvenes in Nigeria in May.
As it stands, there is a lot of fund raising and tough talking to be done. Cautious investors from New York to Beijing have to be won over. Despite the promise of returns of more than 20%, this is likely to be a hard sell. Africa is rising with an average growth rate of 5% at a time when the rest of the world is at a standstill. Few at this annual talk fest could disagree that the economies are moving, but finance needs to keep pace.

The Near  And Dear Dream

The re-election of Jacob Zuma to lead the governing party of the most powerful economy on the African continent, South Africa, was never a case of ‘if’, instead it was a case of by how big a margin he would beat his reluctant challenger, Kgalema Motlanthe. What was a puzzling paradox for many opinion makers though, was how Zuma got more than 70% of the vote when the African National Congress (ANC) gathered for its elective conference in Mangaung on December 16-20.
Were those 4,500 voting delegates so dumb and ignorant? Could they have been bought or lulled to ignore the stuff that filled newspaper columns, radio and television programs and social networks? How on earth did they miss the groundswell of indignation towards their supposedly highly unpopular and bungling president? In which South Africa did those delegates live, that they could not see what the political analysts, commentators, journalists and opposition politicians saw?
Part of the problem is the fact that the ANC still follows an archaic system of electing its leaders. No ANC leader gets to openly contest, so that they could tell why they believe they deserve the top position. As a result, s/he who controls the levers of power during party election time gets to have an upper hand and, depending on how skillful or cunning they may or may not be, the ANC leadership race is always for them to lose. This is only a small part of the problem. Those chosen become the country’s leaders by virtue of the party’s domination of the political landscape. The bigger problem has everything to do with what has become of the over 51 million people that constitute the population of South Africa.
Greed, self-centeredness and dishonesty have become only some of the defining characteristics of South Africans as wealth accumulation, getting plum positions or ensuring they keep their jobs becomes more important than anything else. In the process they’ve become meek and timid, in many ways a defeated people, blaming everything and everybody other than themselves for crises they find ourselves in. They tend to let their attitudes and emotions, prejudices and prescriptions, stand in the way of appreciating the best that there is.
Take the media and political analysts’ reaction to the election of Cyril Ramaphosa as ANC deputy president. When it became apparent that the billionaire businessman was to become the ANC’s number two, pages of newspapers and magazines, as well as hours of airtime were dedicated to full-blown ‘analysis’ of what he is going to do.
While there’s nothing wrong with someone wishing to communicate their wishes on how the ANC can best utilize Ramaphosa; the most interesting aspect of ‘Cyrilmania’ has been how glibly many have come to pronounce it, without any due regard to both the history of his re-emergence and the inner workings of the ANC.
Business and the elite media’s warmth to Ramaphosa seems to have everything to do with the fact that he represents that acceptable, affable face of the ANC—the one that fits the stereotypical image of a suave, sophisticated, articulate leader who will not embarrass. He is the welcome opposite to the polygamist country bumpkin they see in Zuma.
Almost without questioning, business and rest of the elite seem to think that finally, there’ll be a clever black at ANC headquarters where the party’s top six officials meet every Monday. Ramaphosa, the thinking seems to go, will tell Zuma what no one has hitherto had the guts to tell the 70-year-old struggle veteran about such things as inspiring investor confidence or catering to the sophisticated voter.
The truth is that not only is Ramaphosa nothing more than a benefactor of Zuma’s generosity, he is also a crowning success of his deft strategy. What is forgotten is that Zuma preferred to keep Motlanthe and that it was only after Motlanthe spurned the effort, choosing to stand against Zuma instead, that Ramaphosa came into the picture.
But simply because Ramaphosa was second choice does not mean that he cannot achieve the things that many now think he will be best-placed to accomplish. That’s not to say that Zuma is now suddenly in a mood, through Ramaphosa, to pacify constituencies he considers disdainful and unreservedly hostile. Correctly in some instances, incorrectly in others, Zuma’s comments often suggest a firm belief that most media are hell bent to destroy or undermine him.
What’s habitually forgotten is that only one man has a final say in the ANC and that’s its president. Given the way the ANC operates, the more firmly that person is in charge, as Zuma is now, the more people like Ramaphosa will have little option but to tow the line. The only time Ramaphosa will get reprieve, is if Zuma decides to anoint him. That’s if Zuma won’t seek a third term as ANC president.
In interviews with both men, Zuma insisted that he “definitely won’t seek a third term”. He did not wait for me to point out that after his election in 2007, he said he would serve only one term. Ramaphosa would not be drawn into whether he was keen on the top position. For now its “outside of my wish and imagination,” he told me. When I asked what he thought about the attitude of business towards the ANC, he replied: “The business community has not stepped up to the plate. It has held back”.
In five years’ time Ramaphosa will have the option to challenge Zuma, in the same way Zuma challenged Mbeki in 2007 and won, and Motlanthe challenged Zuma and lost.
While post-apartheid ANC leaders contested positions, often fiercely; they hardly represented fundamentally distinct visions of the ANC and the country.
One is tempted to conclude that ‘Cyrilmania’ is a clumsy, if not hopelessly inadequate effort, largely by those who disapprove of Zuma’s rule. As history has proven, the problem with that practice is that it almost always guarantees that such a move won’t be taken seriously, for ANC leaders don’t take kindly to being told by the media.
Another problem with ‘the government must do this, must do that’ tendency of South Africans is that it also serves to hide the inefficiencies of others who have the power and resources that can move the nation forward, like the country’s business and worker leadership.
Sick and tired, South Africa’s stubborn and resilient workers showed up the country’s lack of, not only political, but also business and labor leadership. Though rudderless, the workers successfully organized a massive wave of sporadic, unprotected, often violent and suicidal strikes. Although the workers lost wages and many lose jobs in the aftermath, they made their point. The ultimate loser, though, is the country’s economy.
Has organized business and labor taken the responsibility they always demand of government? No.
Hopefully South Africans will learn—and that includes the Ramaphosa fan club, which holds influential positions in the media and business—that it takes a lot more to exert real influence in their political economy and to build a nation that will be the envy of the continent. Creating heroes and villains is not the answer but a sure way to failure and disappointment.
Tempting as it might be for everyone to engage in the sport of exposing every wrong about him and blaming Zuma for all of South Africa’s ills, he is definitely not the root cause and the delegates to the ANC conference knew that. Blameless, yes, but he is at best a symbol of what is manifestly wrong with South Africans as a whole.
If there’s a lesson that history should have taught South Africans in the past 18 years of democracy, it should be that their nation stands to gain a lot more if they put themselves to the very test they put their leaders to. Everybody—including business, civil society, labor, opposition politicians, journalists, commentators and analysts—should wake up to the reality that they need to use their energies and the platforms they each have, a little more wisely and creatively. There’s nothing wrong with engaging, a lot more rigorously, but also truthfully.

Tag: Delegates

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