EDITORIAL: Carry on like this, and Ramaphosa will be no hero history
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President Cyril Ramaphosa’s question-and-answer session with journalists on Wednesday evening was a valuable exercise for the media and the public and hopefully also for the president.
While Ramaphosa does a large number of public events and answers questions in parliament with regularity, taking questions from the press is an important part of accountability. Journalists — if they take their privileged position in society seriously — should be able to raise the concerns of the public directly with the highest office in the land. The president has agreed to increase the frequency with which he takes media questions in the future and generously acknowledged that he too gains from the interaction.
So how did he do? Ramaphosa plays the statesman role well. He has gravitas and decorum and is disarming when confronted with hostility. He enjoys interacting with people and is used to a warm and fuzzy relationship with the press. So it was unlikely that he had expected the extent of the criticism of his leadership on Wednesday evening. The repeated theme of the questioning was: why is everything taking so long? Why is it taking so long to execute economic reforms that have been on the agenda for years? Why is it taking so long for the criminal justice system to put anyone on trial for the appalling corruption that has crippled the state for the past decade? Why do you need to consult forever?
The tone was markedly different from the last interaction six months ago.
When Ramaphosa began his presidency in February 2019 he underplayed the damage that had been done to both the state and the economy by a decade of Jacob Zuma rule. It was after all his own party that had wrought the damage, while he had looked on passively for much of the time. Ramaphosa eventually did let it slip that SA had experienced “nine wasted years”, in what looked like an unguarded moment, but the overwhelming thrust of his message to South Africans was that “a new dawn” was upon us and that economic growth “was just around the corner”.
Ramaphosa now sees he can’t bluff his way through anymore. In his interaction with the press on Wednesday he described the state he had inherited as “wrecked”, suffering from the “incapacity of a war zone” and that SA had been “on a one-way ticket to complete dysfunctionality”. From now on his concern ...
While Ramaphosa does a large number of public events and answers questions in parliament with regularity, taking questions from the press is an important part of accountability. Journalists — if they take their privileged position in society seriously — should be able to raise the concerns of the public directly with the highest office in the land. The president has agreed to increase the frequency with which he takes media questions in the future and generously acknowledged that he too gains from the interaction.
So how did he do? Ramaphosa plays the statesman role well. He has gravitas and decorum and is disarming when confronted with hostility. He enjoys interacting with people and is used to a warm and fuzzy relationship with the press. So it was unlikely that he had expected the extent of the criticism of his leadership on Wednesday evening. The repeated theme of the questioning was: why is everything taking so long? Why is it taking so long to execute economic reforms that have been on the agenda for years? Why is it taking so long for the criminal justice system to put anyone on trial for the appalling corruption that has crippled the state for the past decade? Why do you need to consult forever?
The tone was markedly different from the last interaction six months ago.
When Ramaphosa began his presidency in February 2019 he underplayed the damage that had been done to both the state and the economy by a decade of Jacob Zuma rule. It was after all his own party that had wrought the damage, while he had looked on passively for much of the time. Ramaphosa eventually did let it slip that SA had experienced “nine wasted years”, in what looked like an unguarded moment, but the overwhelming thrust of his message to South Africans was that “a new dawn” was upon us and that economic growth “was just around the corner”.
Ramaphosa now sees he can’t bluff his way through anymore. In his interaction with the press on Wednesday he described the state he had inherited as “wrecked”, suffering from the “incapacity of a war zone” and that SA had been “on a one-way ticket to complete dysfunctionality”. From now on his concern ...