Dear Citizen,
On Sunday, Cyril Ramaphosa stood before South Africans asking them once again to believe in the promise of the ANC.
A new manifesto. New commitments. Another appeal for trust.
That is democracy. Political parties must make their case and citizens must decide whether they believe them.
But while our attention turns towards another election, I want to ask you to do something increasingly difficult in South African politics.
Remember.
Only last Wednesday, Parliament’s Impeachment Committee confronted yet another obstacle in its attempt to get to the truth about Phala Phala. This time, a letter from President Cyril Ramaphosa objecting to the Committee’s recommended evidence leader, Adv Thandazani Madonsela SC. The matter has now been referred to Parliament’s Legal Services Office for guidance.
Another objection. Another legal question. Another pause.
And so, the penny dropped and crystallised something I have been observing about this President for some time.
Cyril Ramaphosa possesses an extraordinary political skill: he does not always defeat the crisis confronting him. He lowers its temperature until he can outlive it.
An urgent question becomes a process. Public anger becomes consultation. A demand for action becomes an announcement. Political accountability becomes litigation. And somewhere along the way, South Africa gets tired.
Delay. Dilute. Distract.
And so, Dear Citizen, I believe we need to learn to recognise what I now call The Ramaphosa Doctrine.
And Phala Phala may be its most accomplished expression.
The Question Beneath All the Process: Strip away the legal arguments, political theatre and years of noise. Something happened at the private farm of the President of the Republic. Foreign currency was stolen. Serious questions arose about the money, its source, how it was stored, what happened after the theft and whether the President’s conduct was consistent with the obligations of his office.
The Independent Panel chaired by former Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo did not find Ramaphosa guilty. Rather, it found prima facie grounds indicating that he may have committed serious misconduct and a serious violation of the Constitution and the law.
That distinction matters.
Those findings required scrutiny.
In May this year, the Constitutional Court set aside Parliament’s 2022 decision not to proceed and required the matter to return to the parliamentary impeachment process.
Then came the President’s court challenge. An interim interdict halted public hearings while his review of the Independent Panel report was determined. Parliament decided to appeal. The Constitutional Court declined the direct appeal route.
Subsequently, however, Parliament continued the preparatory work available to it and recommended Advocate Thandazani Madonsela SC as evidence leader.
The President objects.
And so, Dear Citizen, years after Phala Phala entered our national consciousness, we are still arguing about the process by which we may eventually interrogate the original questions.
Think about that.
We have not yet finished answering the questions at the centre of this matter.
A President Has Rights, But So Does the Republic
Here I want to resist an easy political argument. Cyril Ramaphosa has rights. Granted.
He is entitled to approach the courts. He is entitled to procedural fairness. If Parliament acts unlawfully, he is entitled to challenge it. Constitutionalism means nothing if we defend those rights only for people with whom we agree.
But citizens are also entitled to stand back and examine the cumulative effect of what has happened.
Review. Interdict. Appeal. Object. Legal opinion.
At what point does defending oneself within an accountability process begin to have the practical effect of keeping accountability permanently beyond reach?
That is why the language of Stalingrad tactics is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid.
It is important to note that Stalingrad is not simply litigation. It is attrition: contest every route, challenge every approach, open another procedural front. Make the journey towards determining the truth so long, complicated and exhausting that eventually those demanding an answer lose the appetite to pursue it. You do not necessarily have to make the question disappear. You simply have to outlast it.
And that is what concerns me about Cyril Ramaphosa. The President Who Cools the Room, but Phala Phala is not the only reason I have begun thinking this way.
Consider the spaza-shop crisis. Children died. Communities were furious. Questions about food safety, enforcement, illegal trading and the township economy became impossible for government to ignore.
Then came the presidential response.
Registration. Regulation. Inspections. Deadlines. A R500 million Spaza Shop Support Fund. Some of those interventions were necessary. But an announcement is not an outcome.
What fundamentally changed once the cameras moved elsewhere? How much of the promised assistance reached the entrepreneurs for whom it was intended?
What happened to the deeper questions about ownership, enforcement and economic participation in our townships?
This is the distinction we too often fail to make: Did government solve the problem, or did government survive the moment?
Thus, I increasingly believe one of Ramaphosa’s defining political skills is temperature control.
Cool the outrage. Announce the process. Survive the moment. Wait for the next crisis to inherit the headlines.
The Anaesthetising of Accountability is where the real danger of the Ramaphosa Doctrine lies. It is tempting to imagine that threats to democratic accountability must arrive dramatically. Sometimes they do not.
Sometimes accountability is simply anaesthetised.
Urgency becomes process. Process becomes delay. Delay becomes fatigue. Fatigue becomes forgetting.
Nothing needs to be abolished. Parliament continues sitting. Courts continue hearing applications. Lawyers continue filing papers. Everyone can truthfully say that the process continues.
Yet the citizen remains without an answer.
Another application. Another objection. Another legal opinion. Another year.
Until eventually someone asks: Whatever happened to Phala Phala?
That sentence must never become the epitaph of this matter.
Citizen, remember!
Yesterday, the ANC asked South Africans to consider its promises for tomorrow.
Consider them. But democracy requires more than hope for tomorrow. It requires memory. Before accepting another promise of renewal, another rallying call of “Thuma Mina”, and promises of improved accountability, remember yesterday’s unanswered questions.
Remember the Independent Panel. Remember the Constitutional Court judgment.
Remember the interdict. Remember the evidence-leader objection. And remember that none of these has answered the question at the centre of Phala Phala.
Ultimately, the issue is not whether one likes Cyril Ramaphosa or has an axe to grind with him. It isn’t even about whether you support one political viewpoint or another.
It is about accountability to the citizen.
Cyril Ramaphosa will not be President forever. The precedent will remain.
If a sufficiently powerful president, surrounded by sufficiently capable lawyers and sufficient political resources, can keep parliamentary accountability trapped in procedure for long enough, then we should worry about what happens when a future president learns the same method. Perhaps one who is far less restrained.
That is why Parliament must be fair without becoming feeble. The President must receive due process. But due process cannot become no process. And constitutional rights cannot quietly become presidential immunity.
The politics of attrition succeeds when those demanding accountability become more exhausted than those resisting it.
That is the wager: Delay. Dilute. Distract.
Wait for another scandal. Another crisis. Another manifesto. Another election.
Wait for South Africa to move on. On Phala Phala, we must refuse.
Yes, President Ramaphosa is entitled to every protection our Constitution affords him.
But he is not entitled to outlast the Constitution itself. And however long the procedural road becomes, one question must remain waiting at its end:
Mr President, what happened at Phala Phala? And what does it tell us about your fitness to hold the highest office in the Republic?
Delay. Dilute. Distract.
Now that you recognise the doctrine, Citizen, beware it.
And on Phala Phala, do not look away!
Yours, Lerato
Beware the Ramaphosa Doctrine: Delay. Dilute. Distract.
Dear Citizen,
On Sunday, Cyril Ramaphosa stood before South Africans asking them once again to believe in the promise of the ANC.
A new manifesto. New commitments. Another appeal for trust.
That is democracy. Political parties must make their case and citizens must decide whether they believe them.
But while our attention turns towards another election, I want to ask you to do something increasingly difficult in South African politics.
Remember.
Only last Wednesday, Parliament’s Impeachment Committee confronted yet another obstacle in its attempt to get to the truth about Phala Phala. This time, a letter from President Cyril Ramaphosa objecting to the Committee’s recommended evidence leader, Adv Thandazani Madonsela SC. The matter has now been referred to Parliament’s Legal Services Office for guidance.
Another objection. Another legal question. Another pause.
And so, the penny dropped and crystallised something I have been observing about this President for some time.
Cyril Ramaphosa possesses an extraordinary political skill: he does not always defeat the crisis confronting him. He lowers its temperature until he can outlive it.
An urgent question becomes a process. Public anger becomes consultation. A demand for action becomes an announcement. Political accountability becomes litigation. And somewhere along the way, South Africa gets tired.
Delay. Dilute. Distract.
And so, Dear Citizen, I believe we need to learn to recognise what I now call The Ramaphosa Doctrine.
And Phala Phala may be its most accomplished expression.
The Question Beneath All the Process: Strip away the legal arguments, political theatre and years of noise. Something happened at the private farm of the President of the Republic. Foreign currency was stolen. Serious questions arose about the money, its source, how it was stored, what happened after the theft and whether the President’s conduct was consistent with the obligations of his office.
The Independent Panel chaired by former Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo did not find Ramaphosa guilty. Rather, it found prima facie grounds indicating that he may have committed serious misconduct and a serious violation of the Constitution and the law.
That distinction matters.
Those findings required scrutiny.
In May this year, the Constitutional Court set aside Parliament’s 2022 decision not to proceed and required the matter to return to the parliamentary impeachment process.
Then came the President’s court challenge. An interim interdict halted public hearings while his review of the Independent Panel report was determined. Parliament decided to appeal. The Constitutional Court declined the direct appeal route.
Subsequently, however, Parliament continued the preparatory work available to it and recommended Advocate Thandazani Madonsela SC as evidence leader.
The President objects.
And so, Dear Citizen, years after Phala Phala entered our national consciousness, we are still arguing about the process by which we may eventually interrogate the original questions.
Think about that.
We have not yet finished answering the questions at the centre of this matter.
A President Has Rights, But So Does the Republic
Here I want to resist an easy political argument. Cyril Ramaphosa has rights. Granted.
He is entitled to approach the courts. He is entitled to procedural fairness. If Parliament acts unlawfully, he is entitled to challenge it. Constitutionalism means nothing if we defend those rights only for people with whom we agree.
But citizens are also entitled to stand back and examine the cumulative effect of what has happened.
Review. Interdict. Appeal. Object. Legal opinion.
At what point does defending oneself within an accountability process begin to have the practical effect of keeping accountability permanently beyond reach?
That is why the language of Stalingrad tactics is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid.
It is important to note that Stalingrad is not simply litigation. It is attrition: contest every route, challenge every approach, open another procedural front. Make the journey towards determining the truth so long, complicated and exhausting that eventually those demanding an answer lose the appetite to pursue it. You do not necessarily have to make the question disappear. You simply have to outlast it.
And that is what concerns me about Cyril Ramaphosa. The President Who Cools the Room, but Phala Phala is not the only reason I have begun thinking this way.
Consider the spaza-shop crisis. Children died. Communities were furious. Questions about food safety, enforcement, illegal trading and the township economy became impossible for government to ignore.
Then came the presidential response.
Registration. Regulation. Inspections. Deadlines. A R500 million Spaza Shop Support Fund. Some of those interventions were necessary. But an announcement is not an outcome.
What fundamentally changed once the cameras moved elsewhere? How much of the promised assistance reached the entrepreneurs for whom it was intended?
What happened to the deeper questions about ownership, enforcement and economic participation in our townships?
This is the distinction we too often fail to make: Did government solve the problem, or did government survive the moment?
Thus, I increasingly believe one of Ramaphosa’s defining political skills is temperature control.
Cool the outrage. Announce the process. Survive the moment. Wait for the next crisis to inherit the headlines.
The Anaesthetising of Accountability is where the real danger of the Ramaphosa Doctrine lies. It is tempting to imagine that threats to democratic accountability must arrive dramatically. Sometimes they do not.
Sometimes accountability is simply anaesthetised.
Urgency becomes process. Process becomes delay. Delay becomes fatigue. Fatigue becomes forgetting.
Nothing needs to be abolished. Parliament continues sitting. Courts continue hearing applications. Lawyers continue filing papers. Everyone can truthfully say that the process continues.
Yet the citizen remains without an answer.
Another application. Another objection. Another legal opinion. Another year.
Until eventually someone asks: Whatever happened to Phala Phala?
That sentence must never become the epitaph of this matter.
Citizen, remember!
Yesterday, the ANC asked South Africans to consider its promises for tomorrow.
Consider them. But democracy requires more than hope for tomorrow. It requires memory. Before accepting another promise of renewal, another rallying call of “Thuma Mina”, and promises of improved accountability, remember yesterday’s unanswered questions.
Remember the Independent Panel. Remember the Constitutional Court judgment.
Remember the interdict. Remember the evidence-leader objection. And remember that none of these has answered the question at the centre of Phala Phala.
Ultimately, the issue is not whether one likes Cyril Ramaphosa or has an axe to grind with him. It isn’t even about whether you support one political viewpoint or another.
It is about accountability to the citizen.
Cyril Ramaphosa will not be President forever. The precedent will remain.
If a sufficiently powerful president, surrounded by sufficiently capable lawyers and sufficient political resources, can keep parliamentary accountability trapped in procedure for long enough, then we should worry about what happens when a future president learns the same method. Perhaps one who is far less restrained.
That is why Parliament must be fair without becoming feeble. The President must receive due process. But due process cannot become no process. And constitutional rights cannot quietly become presidential immunity.
The politics of attrition succeeds when those demanding accountability become more exhausted than those resisting it.
That is the wager: Delay. Dilute. Distract.
Wait for another scandal. Another crisis. Another manifesto. Another election.
Wait for South Africa to move on. On Phala Phala, we must refuse.
Yes, President Ramaphosa is entitled to every protection our Constitution affords him.
But he is not entitled to outlast the Constitution itself. And however long the procedural road becomes, one question must remain waiting at its end:
Mr President, what happened at Phala Phala? And what does it tell us about your fitness to hold the highest office in the Republic?
Delay. Dilute. Distract.
Now that you recognise the doctrine, Citizen, beware it.
And on Phala Phala, do not look away!
Yours, Lerato