‘South Africa’s ruling ANC faces challenge to unite party’

Bloomberg

Cyril Ramaphosa, one of two leading candidates to win a divisive contest for the presidency of South Africa’s ruling Afri-
can National Congress, said the party’s leaders must unite the party after this month’s elective conference.
“Our movement is divided and there are factions in our movement,” Ramaphosa, the country’s deputy president, said in a program on Johannesburg-based radio station 702. “The challenge that we face, particularly going into this conference, is how we are going to unite the ANC and how we will emerge out of this conference united.”
The winner that emerges from the December 16-20 conference to pick a successor to President Jacob Zuma as the party’s head will be its presidential candidate in the 2019 elections that are set to be the toughest since Nelson Mandela led the party to power at the end of apartheid in 1994. The election has caused deep rifts within the 105-year-old ANC, weighed on the rand and nation’s bonds and unnerved investors seeking political and policy clarity.
Ramaphosa’s strongest rival for the position is Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a former chairwoman of the African Union Commission and Zuma’s ex-wife. Ramaphosa didn’t give an explicit answer during the broadcast when asked whether he would, if defe-
ated in the leadership contest, accept the position of Dlamini-Zuma’s deputy.
“If, for instance I am not successful to become president, I will have to reflect on whether I should be deployed elsewhere or deployed in the same position,” he said. “So, it is going to be a matter in which I am going to want to reflect.”
Ramaphosa said the South African economy could grow at a faster pace and that the government had been diverted by self interest and state capture, a local term for the undue influence over the state by business. The ANC should never allow its policy to be up for sale and he wouldn’t “sell his soul for any interest,” Ramaphosa said.
“I believe that our economy is not a one- or two-percent growth economy; I believe it can grow at four percent and we can revitalize our economy if we do the right things,” he said. “We have realized that corruption is rife and we are going to address it. We are going to root out corruption and that is a promise I can make.”
Former South African finance ministers Nhlanhla Nene and Pravin Gordhan should return to the government, Ramaphosa said. Zuma’s dismissal in March of Gordhan caused the nation to lose its investment-grade status with two ratings companies for the first time in 17 years.
“I would want all those people back in government service, because they have an unbelievable role to play in helping us develop. Many of those who were just tossed out, were tossed out for reasons other than their lack of competence,” Ramaphosa said.
He has won endorsement from more ANC branches than Dlamini-Zuma, giving him an edge in this month’s election.