Trump and Ramaphosa: A tale of two rich presidents and the motives of big business

Recent events in the US have shown the proximity business leaders have to President Donald Trump. This has led to concerns that government policy may be determined simply to make money for Trump and his friends. A comparison between the situation in the US and the situation here may illustrate how two democracies are negotiating this contested terrain.

Last week the images of Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and of course Elon Musk standing so close to Trump during his inauguration provided a symbol of the relationship between business and politics in the US.

All three have used their businesses, and thus their influence, in ways that will benefit Trump. And all have done so publicly.

Bezos prevented The Washington Post from endorsing Kamala Harris for president, Zuckerberg has recently removed fact-checkers from Facebook and Musk changed the algorithms in X to ensure a pro-Trump narrative.

Much has already been said about this. 

But it may still be worth asking how it must feel to be a man who has created an entire industry, is worth billions of dollars, has immense power of his own, and yet still feels so impotent that he has to bend the knee to someone like Trump.

To put it another way, is the humiliation worth it just for a little more money?

Business and politics

What is clear is that these three people are prepared to continue to act in this way. And presumably, they will benefit financially from doing this.

The link between business and politics in the US has always been intensely strong. Some estimates suggest corporate America spends around $9-billion a year on lobbying politicians, and that one hundred thousand people spend their lives trying to influence democratically elected officials. 

Companies would not do this if it did not work.

The payoffs can be huge.

For example, Trump now appears to have the power of life and death over TikTok, having signed an executive order to prevent its ban from being implemented. There have been suggestions it could be sold to Musk.

This would mean that both Republican and Democrat officials voted to ban TikTok, only for it to remain operating because a foreign government would have been forced to sell it to the president’s friend.

Presumably, other deals could well be on the table for Bezos and Zuckerberg.

Here, one of the most important dynamics of the post-pandemic period has been the increasing role of the private sector.

Whether it be privately owned carriages running on state-owned railways, a private operator running Pier Two at Durban Harbour, or the private sector help for Eskom, business is playing a bigger role.

One of the key elements of this is Business 4 South Africa, which last year saw hundreds of CEOs attending the launch of its second phase with President Cyril Ramaphosa.

This must surely result in significant facetime for CEOs anxious to get some inside track with the President.

That said, it is still difficult to imagine Adrian Gore sitting down to Sunday lunch with the Ramaphosa family, in the way Musk has become a regular at Mar-a-lago.

However, it is entirely possible to imagine the Ramaphosas and the Motsepes spending holidays together. They are family. It is even possible that Jeff and Bridgette Radebe join them.

However, it would seem more likely that the real area of concern in our society would not be about proximity to the President. Ramaphosa does not have the power to issue executive orders that would have such an impact on individual businesses, as Trump does.

Of course, the history of the Zuma era shows that in our system, the President does have immense power.

The Zondo Commission found that Zuma “would do anything the Guptas wanted him to do”. As a result, they were able to steal nearly R50-billion.

What may have changed is that during that time, many Cabinet ministers would do almost anything for Zuma. Now, no South African president will have that much power again. This is both because the ANC has fractured in so many ways and because the nature of a coalition makes governance decisions more complex.

Some may also claim that because Ramaphosa is already a rich person there is less chance of him indulging in corruption. Unfortunately, Trump is a rich person too, and yet still feels the need to create cryptocurrency scams. 

Proximity to power

But what may be more pervasive in our society is the use of proximity to power at lower levels for simple enrichment.

Edwin Sodi may be a useful example of this.

He has provided the use of properties to Deputy President Paul Mashatile. And he’s currently on trial with Ace Magashule for his alleged use of political connections to land deals with the Free State provincial government.

There are many, many, many more examples.

Ramaphosa himself has said that there are people who sabotage water systems to ensure their tankers get business from councils. It is entirely likely that they are connected to the people who make the decisions about which company will get a tender to do this.

This means that in our situation, the use of political connections happens in a much less public way than what we have seen in the US.

While the US may have created several industries over the past few decades (in some ways created by Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg), our smaller economy has created a situation where people do this simply for their own enrichment.

This shows that perhaps the big difference between many of our businesspeople and many of those in the US is that while people here are often just looking for more money, in the US it may be about power.

This is to be expected. The US economy has set trends for decades, ours often shows it is still dependent on commodity cycles.

And, for the moment, their system appears to be much more open. Such is Trump’s need to show he is important that these business leaders had to openly show their fealty.

Here, there is no such transparency and it can often be impossible to know what the true relationship between business and politics is.

What is also clear is that the relationship between politicians and businesspeople will change over time, often depending on who is in the Union Buildings or the White House.

But no matter who that person is, the businesspeople around them need to be watched very carefully. While there may be differences between the US and our situation, one thing remains the same.

Businesspeople who are close to politicians, who give them gifts, or public displays of support, have a motive. And that motive is only about profit. DM