PRESIDENT RAMAPHOSA EXPOSED-EXPROPRIATION OF LAND WITHOUT COMPENSATION
WHO IS PRESIDENT RAMAPHOSA REALY! A SUMMARY OF WHAT IS GOING TO MATERIALIZE FROM MR. JEKYLL AND HYDE
A LIFE OF LIES AND PROPAGANDA EXPOSED
Ramaphosa’s “FROG PLAN”
OPINION: The ANC and Ramaphosa’s 1994 plan for the whites
John Kane-Berman
John Kane-Berman on an intriguing anecdote in the late Mario Oriani-Ambrosini’s memoirs
Cyril Ramaphosa and the story of the frogs in the water
In recently published journals, one of Cyril Ramaphosa’s primary opponents pays generous tribute to his character and negotiating skills during the talks leading up to the new South African constitution and the election in 1994.
Dr Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, who died in 2014, was a constitutional lawyer who became an MP. He was also a principal adviser to Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi both during the negotiations and afterwards when the latter was the minister of home affairs in the governments of national unity.
His memoirs — “the Prince and I”(Ambrosini) South African Institutional Odyssey –published this year by his estate.
According to the memoirs, Mr Ramaphosa, “stood head and shoulders above his colleagues” in the African National Congress (ANC) as well as above the National Party’s negotiators. He was a “born leader” and a “straight shooter.” Nor did he ever lie or “misrepresent anything.” What then are we to make of this paragraph in Dr Oriani-Ambrosini’s intriguing memoirs?
“In his brutal honesty, Ramaphosa told me of the ANC’s 25-year strategy to deal with the whites: it would be like boiling a frog alive, by raising the temperature very slowly. Being cold-blooded, the frog does not notice the slow temperature increase, but if the temperature raised suddenly, the frog would jump out of the water. He meant that the black majority would pass laws transferring wealth, land, and economic power from white to black slowly and incrementally, until the whites lost all they had gained in South Africa, but without taking too much from them at any given time to cause them to rebel or fight.”
Note; Cyril Ramaphosa never denied that he had said the above to Dr Ambrosini
Since then Mr Ramaphosa has had a great deal else to say. He said recently that “radical economic transformation” required policies with an “over-riding focus on the creation of jobs.” Policies that “do not create jobs — or that threaten jobs — must be reviewed and revised.” This thinking is incompatible with expropriation of all white “wealth, land, and economic power.”
Mr Ramaphosa recently told the South African Communist Party (SACP) that “far higher levels of fixed investment” were necessary to achieve growth and create employment on a massive scale. Such investment would not be forthcoming in the context of the mass expropriation of the white property of which he spoke to Dr Oriani-Ambrosini. Investors are already extremely wary.
Mr Ramaphosa knows this. Even so, he has recently endorsed the ANC’s policy of bringing about a national democratic revolution — although newspapers and nearly all online commentators routinely ignore these remarks. Either they do not take them seriously, or they do not wish to alert the frogs — Mr Ramaphosa of course benefits from this voluntary censorship.
His remarks all those many years ago help to explain something the mining industry does not understand: why, despite its achievements in handing over equity to black economic empowerment partners, the mining minister keeps on demanding more.
Although his language was lurid, what Mr Ramaphosa told Dr Oriani-Ambrosini is in line with the “strategy and tactics” documents the ANC and its SACP allies publish from time to time on the national democratic revolution.
The implementation involves a “non-big-bang” approach because this would frighten the horses, or alert the frogs. An incremental approach is likely to be more successful. Move forward, stage a tactical retreat, do not provoke too much opposition, and then press forward when the time is more auspicious.
To what extent Mr Ramaphosa is still committed to what he said in his speech about white people and frogs is now clear. As a trade unionist, before he went into politics, he had to adopt a pragmatic approach. He is president of the ANC and President of South Africa. Would pragmatism supplant revolutionary ideology? Since appointed, he made damaging statements that influenced the country negatively. The state ruled with a bunch of crooks on the ANC benches which is hell-bent on destroying the economy. Ramaphosa is also guilty of lying and taking a bribe while the deputy President under Jacob Zuma.
The answers to the economic future of South Africa is guesswork. Mr Ramaphosa’s main attraction at this stage is that his political rivals for the top job are uninspiring, if not worse. Alone, this will secure his media and business support, irrespective of whether he is a revolutionary or a reformer.
* John Kane-Berman is a policy fellow at the IRR, a think-tank that promotes political and economic freedom
Mattheus Frederik
