On 15th February Cyril Ramaphosa became the 5th President of South Africa since the fall of Apartheid in 1994. His ascent to the top job was a fait accompli after he was elected President of the African National Congress (ANC) in December 2017. He replaced the corrupt, incompetent and much scandal-ridden Jacob Zuma, who had overseen an economic crisis rooted in corruption, political incompetence and uncertainty, disastrous policies and state capture in collaboration with the Gupta brothers. Growth is anaemic, unemployment is rampant, poverty is widespread and the currency has collapsed amidst extreme volatility. This is a politically manufactured economic crisis. The hope is that the seemingly more moderate, business friendly Ramaphosa will be able to turn things around. He will face the electorate in 2019 in a general election. But given ANC’s dominance, he is likely to remain in office.
Politically, the new President is of the left. He started out as an activist and union leader before moving into party politics, and was elected Secretary general of the ANC in 1991 – but lost out to Thabo Mbeki in the race to replace Nelson Mandela in 1997. He then embarked on a successful career in business which made him one of South Africa’s richest men, with a fortune estimated at ZAR 6.4bn. He hangs out with the elite and patronizes the country’s top members clubs. He is no ordinary socialist. But he has remained an ANC member and re-committed to full-time politics as Deputy President in 2014. As a presidential candidate, Ramaphosa spoke of wooing business back to South Africa and the Rand rallied strongly on his election. But can a leopard change its spots? If anything can open the eyes of a socialist, it’s a taste of success and exposure to the virtues of capitalism.
According to Professor Anthony Butler of the University of Cape Town, who has written a biography on Ramaphosa, business people who know him hope that President Ramaphosa will disappoint his left-wing friends with a non-ideological, pragmatic approach – the antithesis of the Zuma years – but old friends describe him as a committed socialist who would likely move left should he ascend to the presidency. He now has. Who will be proven right?
The ANC’s left-wing legacy is set to continue (party members still call each other comrade). Policy suggestions include traditional socialist initiatives such as a minimum wage, paid internships and a socialized National Health Insurance programme. For business, he has more standard statist fare: a Buy Local programme, a Digital Industrial Revolution Commission and direct state investment in startups!
But one policy has attracted most of the attention: in a break with recent tradition for market led land reforms, Ramaphosa has decided to adopt a policy from the Marxist radical Julius Malema, head of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, who proposed an amendment to the constitution allowing the state to seize land from white farmers (who control 73% of arable land) without compensation. Ramaphosa enthusiastically embraced the idea. On 20th February, he told supporters: ‘The expropriation of land without compensation is envisaged as one of the measures that we will use to accelerate redistribution of land to black South Africans.’ The amendment was passed a few days later by 241 votes to 83.
Business organisations are already warning against investing in South Africa. But according to Ramaphosa there is no need to panic: ‘Farming activities must continue as normal and investment in land and farming must continue.’ Of course, violence, including murder, against the country’s white farming community is nothing new. Dozens of white farmers are killed every year, and an endorsement of theft of their land is hardly going to tame tempers.
A similar policy has of course been tried before, in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe implemented land redistribution policies around the turn of the century. Within a few years, the former ‘bread basket of southern Africa’ suffered plummeting food production and was soon an economic basket case with hyperinflation, mass unemployment and widespread poverty (in 2017 the Borgen Project estimated that 72% of the population lives in chronic poverty). This is a natural consequence of such a mad policy: the sanctity of property rights is a cornerstone of a functioning market economy. Ramaphosa is off to a calamitous start; his new policy will prove to be extremely damaging for the already faltering South African economy.
In Britain, there are lessons for an electorate who is hungry for change and has proven susceptible to left-wing populism. Firsts and foremost, it is essential to understand the repercussions for economic prosperity of group thinking, the undermining of meritocracy, demonization of success, the erosion of property rights and hostility to wealth creation. This is something the hard left has always failed to appreciate. But equally important, the British electorate should pay attention to the behaviour once in office of seemingly moderate candidates. Once in power they are likely to show their true face, and Jeremy Corbyn and his zealots have radical and dangerous credentials. The early signs are that Ramaphosa will be a divisive president with a penchant for radical policies, despite his claim to be a moderate. South Africa will suffer the consequences of this deceit. Britain is on the way to making the same mistake.