In South Africa, Ramaphosa Rises as Lonmin Expires

Details: Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1530 .... December 22, 2017
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In South Africa, Ramaphosa Rises as Lonmin Expires:

Workers, Women and Communities Prepare to Fight, Not Mourn

Patrick Bond

Monday night’s internal African National Congress (ANC) presidential election of Cyril Ramaphosa -- with a razor-thin 51 per cent majority of nearly 4800 delegates -- displaced but did not resolve a fight between two bitterly-opposed factions. On the one hand are powerful elements friendly to so-called "White Monopoly Capital," and on the other are outgoing ANC president Jacob Zuma’s allies led by Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, his ex-wife and former African Union chairperson. The latter faction includes corrupt state "tenderpreneur" syndicates, especially the notorious Gupta brothers, and is hence typically nicknamed "Zupta." (Zuma is still scheduled to serve as national president until mid-2019.)

South Africa’s currency... rose rapidly in value after Ramaphosa won, for he is celebrated by big business and the mainstream media. But he has also gained endorsements -- due to quirky local political alignments -- from the SA Communist Party, ANC-aligned trade unions and most centrists and liberals who despise the Zuptas. With this base and some nominal prosecutions of corruption, Ramaphosa will likely relegitimize the fast-fading ANC in time for a 2019 electoral victory. However, given the narrowness of his win, he probably cannot engineer Zuma’s early departure as many hoped, in the way Zuma had ousted Thabo Mbeki nine months before his term was due to end in 2009.