Durban – Billionaire South African businessman Rob Hersov has left no stone unturned in his criticism of President Cyril Ramaphosa, calling the head of state spineless, useless, a disgrace, a disappointment and an embarrassment to the country, urging him to resign immediately.
Hersov delivered a brutal assessment of Ramaphosa’s tenure as president while addressing a group of businesspeople during the BizNews Conference 2022 where he said that Ramaphosa was a “useless, spineless failure”.
“How that spineless Cyril Ramaphosa deals with Phala Phala is the ultimate test of what happens to this country. He is guilty on about 14 charges. If you look at it carefully, he’s guilty but he’s not saying a word, his lawyers have said don't say a thing because all he’s focused on is December.
“The nasty RET leftists, Arthur Fraser and the Zuma gangsters have thrown the hand grenade at Cyril and shown him for what he is, the emperor has no clothes. Cyril is spineless, useless and is past his sell-by date.
“If you look at his face (Ramaphosa’s) he knows he’s lost the plot and he never had the plot to start with and the sooner he resigns the better. For those of you who say what happens when Cyril leaves because he was protecting us, let’s face the evil now otherwise we die the death of a thousand cuts. Let’s face what comes next now, if it’s Paul Mashatile, let’s face Paul Mashatile now. If it’s the rotten RET crowd let’s face them now,” Hersov said.
The no-holds barred analysis was not only limited to Ramaphosa but was also extended to his Cabinet ministers which he said was bloated with 27 ministers, a director general, and a team below them.
“What the hell do these people do?” Hersov asked. “Norway has 15 (ministers), why do we need a minister of women, what does a minister of women do if men and women were treated equally?”
Hersov, 61, also hit out at the age of the ministers. “These are corrupt clowns, criminals … Cyril’s clown Cabinet.
“Look at them, other than one or two, most of these people are my age, they’re mandala (old), there’s a lot of them who are older, but all of them are incompetent. They’ve been moved from ministerial post to ministerial post without any skills in any of them,” Hersov said.
He said that the ministers had never been in business and therefore did not know how to run organisations, they did not worry about the bottom line and instead only worried about what they were getting out of it.
Putting up a slide showing the Cabinet ministers, Hersov said: “This clown Cabinet runs the country, it’s disgusting. I get angry when I look at some of these people. I know Enoch (Godongwana), the finance minister is a good guy, Naledi Pandor is a good person, but very few others.
“The lady who is in charge of Human Settlements (Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane) reached out to me and said ‘I’m trying to get what business needs in this country so that we can at least find a middle ground. So there is some good there, but there’s a lot of bad and a lot of evil,” Hersov said.
He said that if Police Minister Bheki Cele were to be put at the top of the “evil list” he would be number one, two and three. “What a disaster, what a useless piece of … let me stop there,” Hersov said.
He went on to say that “these useless people” were going to be voted into power again in 2024 unless the coalition got its act together and unless the 55% of eligible voters who did not vote in 2019 stood up and voted.
He said that it was an embarrassment that his family had given Ramaphosa the chance to step up and that if he was to blame for this, he apologised to all of South Africa, Africa and the world “for such a disgrace being the president of our country”.
He also challenged Patrice Motsepe, whom he said that his family had also “given his step up” by selling part of their mining business to him, to cut ties with the ANC, resign his membership, and stop giving the party his money.
“The minute you do that, you are the legend that you deserve to be, but until you do that we are holding you to account for not doing it,” Hersov said.
Hersov also gave his suggestions for a new Cabinet, which he referred to as “expert people who know what they are doing, have the good of the country at heart and who could run this country so much better than these clowns we’ve got in the Cabinet at the moment”.
This list of “hypothetical Cabinet ministers”, as Hersov referred to them, included public speaker and businessman Vusi Thembekwayo in Transport and Communications, actor and presenter Siv Ngesi in Culture, Sport and Community Affairs, former public protector Thuli Madonsela in Justice, while Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane would remain as Minister of Human Settlements.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE