SOWETO: Cyril Ramaphosa’s victory in the African National
Congress leadership battle has sparked renewed hope among many in South
Africa’s Soweto township where he grew up — and where frustration with
the party has been mounting.
“He is a model because he is
one person that came out of the township and became a great businessman
in this world,” said 21-year-old journalism student Charlie Khoza from
the Tshawelo district of Soweto.
He was among a group of
six young men standing on a street corner bathed in sunlight, drinking
canned sodas the day after Ramaphosa’s decisive victory in the tight
leadership race.
Their optimism for the probable future president and former trade unionist-turned-businessman was widely shared.
In
the less well-off Chiawele district of Soweto, just streets away from
where Ramaphosa was born 65 years ago, Niseman Baleyi, 39, was cutting
hair to the rhythm of traditional music.
A father of two and a barber for 20 years, Niseman is increasingly struggling to make ends meet.
But
he is optimistic that the election of a multimillionaire to lead the
ANC will mean an economic renaissance for South Africa where more than a
quarter of people are jobless.
‘A lot of promises’
As
well as soaring unemployment, Africa’s most industrialised economy has
suffered as big companies deterred by political uncertainty have opted
to swell their cash reserves rather than investing in expansion or job
creation.
Tanking investor confidence has led to a spate
of credit ratings downgrades that have driven up the cost of government
borrowing.
“People are going to look at South Africa in a different way and are going to come to create jobs for the youth,” said Khoza.
Many
in Soweto are already speaking about Ramaphosa as if he were already
head of state — although Zuma will remain national president until 2019
when Ramaphosa will run for office in nationwide elections.
To
have a chance of keeping the ANC in power, Ramaphosa will have a
serious task to persuade the many South Africans who feel let down by
the storied anti-apartheid party.
“It’s been over 20
years and we have had a lot of promises — and they are not meeting
them,” said Mzandile Msingo, 34, a mechanic by training but unemployed
for three years.
Among the pledges the ruling party has
struggled to deliver are free university tuition, quality housing, jobs
and the redistribution of wealth to the black majority.
Msingo lives with his wife and children in his parents’ home and has been waiting “a very long time” for subsidised housing.
The
ANC, in power since the end of apartheid and forever tied to Nelson
Mandela’s conciliatory, non-racial rhetoric, has seen its influence
dwindle as the economy has shrunk, causing its support base to suffer.
‘Wait and see’
But Msingo and many others like him in Soweto are adamant that Ramaphosa’s election spells the end of Zuma’s controversial era.
His
time in office has been marked by corruption scandals, abuse of power
and repeated censure by South Africa’s remarkably resilient institutions
including the courts, media and graft watchdog.
Msingo
said that he would no longer support the ANC because of the corruption
allegations swirling around Zuma who became party leader in 2007 and
president in 2009.
“Zuma is doing his own thing instead
of doing it for the country... [like] using government money to build
his own house,” he said while smoking a cigarette. “With Ramaphosa we
are going to wait and see and maybe we are going to see something else
from the ANC.”
The grinding hardships faced by many
black youth are pushing increasingly large numbers of voters into the
hands of the populist party of firebrand leader Julius Malema.
His
Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party continues to make electoral gains
and has convinced many township youth that nationalising the mines and
redistributing land will lift them out of poverty.
Ricky
Makoala, an unemployed 27-year-old, has been an EFF backer for two years
and rules out any return to the ANC fold — even under Ramaphosa’s
leadership.
“He is more white monopoly capital than
anybody else,” he said, repeating a common belief that much of the
country’s economy is still controlled by a small handful of white-owned
businesses.