President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is set for his second term following his inauguration at the Union Buildings on Wednesday, has not received any favourable assessment from various political analysts.
On Monday, during an interview on ‘Newzroom Afrika’, political analyst Sandile Swana was brutal in his analysis, saying Ramaphosa’s first term was dismal and the “worst since the 1960s”.
“President Cyril Ramaphosa has performed worse than Zuma and in my judgement, he has been the worst president in terms of performance since 1960 at least. He needed to be removed from office, based on that.
“So, the MK Party and the EFF wanted him and the DA put in a very nice sweetener of allowing him to stay and be his political bodyguard.
“I suppose that was very sweet to the ears of ANC cadres. I think that we must be aware that the ANC in 1994 and the ANC that elected Thabo Mbeki to be president and allowed him to operate is very different from this ANC which has ended up in this coalition and whatever it becomes after this, it will never represent that.
“Bear in mind that the DA, the bulk majority of the leadership and voters are National Party voters in any event,” Swana said.
At the start of his term, Ramaphosa made a lot of promises, including job creation, economic recovery, ending load shedding, unemployment and poverty, the rising cost of living, and crime and corruption.
However, many of these promises were yet to materialise for most South Africans with the exception of the recent reprieve on load shedding.
Speaking to ‘The Star’ on Tuesday, Professor Sipho Seepe echoed Swana’s sentiments, saying Ramaphosa has nothing to show for his first term in office except a 17% decline in voter share.
“Ramaphosa took the ANC from 62% in 2018 to 57% in the 2019 elections. In this year’s election he did even worse as the ANC only managed a 40% share of the votes.
“For us to be able to judge him fairly, we must judge him against the promises he made. This is the president who promised to deal with unemployment, and promised that under his administration, there will be economic growth and a million houses built in Alexandra.
“He promised to tackle corruption and crime has spiralled out of control, so based on the promises he made, he has failed dismally on the promises he made,” Seepe said.
Beyond that, Seepe said, the Government of National Unity (GNU) alongside the DA will have dire consequences for the natives of this country as only the policies of the DA and white people will take precedence.
“Effectively, the ANC failed to deliver on its own transformative policies. Under Ramaphosa, there was a reversal of transformation and even black businesses suffered.
“We have seen the replacement of black talent by Indians and whites under him. So, you are talking about a phenomenal failure.
“Now with the DA, whose mandate is to protect white privilege that means the DA-led GNU is not going to deliver for black people,” he said.
Professor Siphamandla Zondi said Ramaphosa’s first tenure had made some level of progress, especially towards the end.
“His term was marked by some progress in certain areas such as the fight against crime and corruption, the mobilising of international investment, stabilising municipalities, the matric pass rate, and so forth.
“But there was no change where it matters, including fighting poverty, inequality, unemployment, which required plus 5% economic growth.
“This was not realised as the economy has struggled to recover. I think the election results are also an opinion survey of the people on the performance of government as experienced by the people on the ground.
“The recent 10 years review of the National Development Plan also indicated that the country as a whole was not doing well across a number of indicators, some of this had to do with global conditions of slow global economic recovery,” said Zondi.
The Star