Ramaphosa Becomes New President of South Africa

Jacob Zuma stepped down as the President of South Africa, and was replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa. Zuma was forced out due to rampant corruption. In his State of the Nation Address earlier today, Ramaphosa is promising to root out corruption in the government. However, for whites living in South Africa, Ramaphosa's ascendancy to the presidential post should be greeted with concern given what he said in today's address. In his state of the nation address given today, Ramaphosa spoke of using measures to increase black control of industry and businesses. Later, as to the issue of "land reform," he stated:

           This year, we will take decisive action to realise the enormous economic potential of agriculture. 

          We will accelerate our land redistribution programme not only to redress a grave historical injustice, but also to bring more producers into the agricultural sector and to make more land available for cultivation. 

           We will pursue a comprehensive approach that makes effective use of all the mechanisms at our disposal. 

            Guided by the resolutions of the 54th National Conference of the governing party, this approach will include the expropriation of land without compensation. 

             We are determined that expropriation without compensation should be implemented in a way that increases agricultural production, improves food security and ensure that the land is returned to those from whom it was taken under colonialism and apartheid.

  This is also revealing about Ramaphosa's goals:

         In recently published memoirs, one of Cyril Ramaphosa's main 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 key adviser to Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi both during the negotiations and afterwards when the latter was minister of home affairs in the governments of national unity. His memoirs – the Prince and I: A South African Institutional Odyssey – are 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, which is done by raising the temperature very slowly. Being cold-blooded, the frog does not notice the slow temperature increase, but if the temperature is raised suddenly, the frog will 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."