Johannesburg- President Cyril Ramaphosa must brace himself for a politically volatile 2022. As he gears himself up to contest his second term as ANC president, Ramaphosa will be faced with two significant challenges that are surely going to test his political resilience in the new year.
He is going to have to deal with the ramifications of his predecessor Jacob Zuma’s never-ending brushes with the law. And they are just too many.
From his current corruption trial to possible charges that might emanate from the State Capture Commission, Zuma is going to keep the country – especially Ramaphosa – very busy.
Key among the challenges Ramaphosa is going to have to deal with is the prospect of Zuma being sent back to jail. Following this week’s court ruling that his release from prison on medical parole was an act of illegality, Zuma’s imprisonment seems imminent.
In its judgment, the court stopped short of describing the release – engineered by Zuma’s acolyte Arthur Fraser in his capacity as Correctional Services commissioner – an act of official thuggery.
However, it is not going to matter to the Zuma faction of the ANC and many other mischief-makers that it is not Ramaphosa – or the state – who took the matter of Zuma’s release to court.
In the run-up to the party’s elective conference, it is all going to be used as an example of Ramaphosa’s political machinations.
It remains to be seen how Ramaphosa is going to ward off those attacks and whether he has any strategy in his political artillery. Zuma’s battles are mostly judicial matters, which have astoundingly been politicized to deflate attention from the real criminal issues.
South Africans must also expect the “Zondo Files”, which are going to flow from the much-anticipated State Capture Commission’s findings and recommendations to drop anytime in January.
From the testimony and evidence, which played out before the Zondo commission, there is no doubt that Zuma was the chief enabler of state capture.
Again, South Africans must expect the findings and recommendations not to be kind to him and his many political enthusiasts who have rallied under the banner of the so-called Radical Economic Transformation, which Zuma failed to achieve under his presidency.
Zuma’s first spell in prison in democratic South Africa came as a result of the Zondo commission’s tough stance on his refusal to cooperate with its proceedings.
The commission’s findings on Zuma and his political pals, who all participated in the grand scale looting of this country’s resources, are going to be the next terrain of the anti-Ramaphosa plot.
They are going to seek to use the commission, among other things, to dislodge him at the party’s next conference, which is expected to take place next December.
If anything, Ramaphosa is going to have his hands full because of Zuma’s political misdeeds while he was still in office. Since Ramaphosa took over as ANC and the country’s president, Zuma – with the active assistance of a coterie of ANC officials – has been an albatross around Ramaphosa’s neck.
It is going to be worse in 2022, and South Africans must brace themselves for dirty political wars.
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