Cyril Ramaphosa and the limits of presidential political authority

style="font-weight: 400;">press conference, dressed in military fatigues while surrounded by people with guns.

The fact that Ramaphosa acted against Mchunu (probably correctly), but not against Mkhwanazi, suggests he felt he could not act against him.

The MK party’s public marches of support for Mkhwanazi will feed into speculation that there is a deeper element to this that includes the sometimes impenetrable politics of KZN.

It’s very strange for a provincial police commissioner to be in a position to virtually take down a police minister in this way. 

The political implications of this are profound.

Read more: Senzo Mchunu crafted a clean image — KZN’s top cop has blown it up

Inconsistent action

While Mchunu had never stated publicly that he would campaign for an ANC leadership position in 2027, any such hopes are in tatters.

The commission will presumably take at least a year to report. By then, even if he is cleared, he will have lost too much time and his public reputation might well be destroyed no matter what happens.

Ramaphosa was careful to mention in his Sunday address that he wants an interim report from the commission within three months.

He may hope that such a report would give him grounds to suspend or otherwise take action against Mkhwanazi. If that is the case, it reveals that there are limits on his ability to act against Mkhwanazi now.

This follows Ramaphosa’s decision to fire the DA’s deputy trade, industry and competition minister Andrew Whitfield.

While he has said that it was entirely because Whitfield had travelled out of the country without receiving his permission, he has still not properly explained the timing.

It is true, as Sam Mkokeli has pointed out, that Whitfield’s trip coincided with the Budget fight between the DA and the ANC, and thus Ramaphosa might have felt it would be difficult to fire Whitfield then.

But the timing is still odd, and the Presidency could have signalled this as a reason if that was the case. Instead, Ramaphosa’s action might suggest that he was under pressure in some quarters to take action against the DA.

Delaying decisions

There are other factors which also suggest Ramaphosa may lack political authority.

He has not yet acted against the Higher Education Minister Nobuhle Nkabane, despite intense public calls for her to be removed for allegedly lying to Parliament.

At the same time, the ANC confirmed on Tuesday that a meeting of its national executive committee (NEC), scheduled for this weekend, has been postponed.

While that is not surprising in itself, it appears to be part of a series of postponements. It also means that the NEC has not met for nearly four months, which is unusual.

Read more: It’s ANC business as usual for Senzo Mchunu, despite being put on special leave

While technically, the decision to hold or postpone an NEC meeting is usually in the powers of the secretary-general (in this case, Fikile Mbalula), it suggests there may be a desire to avoid such a meeting.

Considering that tensions between the ANC and the DA might well boil over with next week’s Parliamentary appropriations votes (where the DA has said it will vote against the budgets of ministries controlled by ANC ministers it has labelled “corrupt”), this may be part of a desire to avoid an NEC discussion on the subject of the coalition.

None of this should be a surprise.

When Ramaphosa became ANC leader, he said the ANC had to “renew” itself, that it was “Accused Number One” in the dock.

Yet, he has retained people in his Cabinet with claims of corruption against them, including David Mahlobo, Thembi Simelane and now Nkabane.

This is one of the reasons the DA feels it can attack the ANC from within the coalition. It is emboldened by this lack of action, and knows that its constituents support its criticisms.

Limits to power

All of this has led to more calls from more people that Ramaphosa “must take action”. It is a call that has been made from some quarters almost throughout his presidency.

If his public statements are taken at face value and yet he does not act, it must be because he feels he cannot – that there are very tight limits to his political authority.

There are many reasons why this might be the case.

First, the ANC has become very diffuse; it is not just divided among certain groups. It can sometimes appear to consist of factions that are not tightly defined. This makes its dynamics and decisions more difficult to predict.

Then there is its own dramatic political decline. While the internal dynamics of a political party have been difficult enough for previous presidents, Ramaphosa also has to deal with the practical difficulties of a coalition government.

At the same time, as the quality of life of almost all South Africans has deteriorated over the past 20 years, so the legitimacy and popularity of politicians have declined. 

They are blamed for everything that goes wrong. And rightly so.

It may now be that all our politicians have less power in public than they used to.

The global environment, and the Trump administration, have also made Ramaphosa appear weaker.

Being lectured in the Oval Office, and seemingly unable to send Mcebisi Jonas to the US, must aid the perception that he is unable to drive events.

Read more: Presidency condemns DA’s ‘latest effort to embarrass’ special envoy Mcebisi Jonas

While all this paints a picture of a person unable to act, it should be remembered that it is unlikely anyone else in Ramaphosa’s position would have any more freedom of action.

The forces which constrain him, whether they be the internal dynamics of the ANC, the difficulties of the coalition or the relationship with the Trump administration, would constrain anyone else too.

As our politics continues to decentralise and to fracture, so the political authority of the president is likely to grow weaker.

That means whoever takes over from Ramaphosa may find that situation even more constraining than he does.

There may be a strong argument for Ramaphosa to act more decisively in some cases. But there are reasons why he doesn’t.

Those reasons are likely to grow stronger over time, simply as a result of structural changes in our politics. DM