“A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing… These kinds of optimistic relations are not inherently cruel. They become cruel only when the object that draws your attachment actively impedes the aim that brought you to it initially” — Lauren Berlant. 

The Phala Phala scandal is morally sapping. It saps one to the soul. It forces the worst of choices upon folk who want the best for their country, who want to work, build businesses, study, learn, to survive.  

On the one hand, we have a President with serious questions to answer about his financial affairs. This is a man whose administration has underperformed in almost every metric, but to whom inordinate public trust was extended. Cyril Ramaphosa was indulged because his hands were clean; his compound was not a crime scene in contrast to his allegedly venal predecessor.

Yet by his own admission, Phala Phala was the site of extraordinarily suspicious transactions.

On Ramaphosa’s own version, a Sudanese foreigner on Christmas Day, 2019, came unannounced to buy $580,000 worth of buffaloes, leaving with little more than a back-of-cigarette-box receipt. The man left no trace and two-and-a-half years later, has still not picked up the beasts. The foreign currency was stashed inside a sofa in the president’s house, where, two months later and still unbanked and undeclared to Sars, the money was stolen. An unorthodox cross-border police investigation ensued, undertaken by the president’s personal protector with all the markings of a hush-up.

Putting aside legal questions about whether or not the President’s actions constitute impeachable conduct, this set of facts, admitted by the president, has shaken trust in him. What is even worse is the offhand, technical manner the President replied to a parliamentary inquiry. When asked why, as President, he was doing business as a farmer in the first place, he tried to claim billionaire’s privilege. Nah, this was not “paid work”. He was no mere worker on the farm, but an owner of a close corporation whose minions handled the filthy lucre.

And he was really only dabbling in his passion anyway, the whole game enterprise was running at a loss. Quite a sickening, rules-for-thee-and-not-for-me attitude, like Tory ministers with monies in tax havens everywhere. And like them, he resorts to mere rules of Parliament on what constitutes serious misconduct to read down the higher standards of conduct expected by the Constitution in his papers challenging the parliamentary panel’s findings.

And where were the confirmatory affidavits from his farm managers? The Cyril Legal Fire Brigade is quick to douse Arthur Fraser’s affidavits as amplifying hearsay, but Ramaphosa’s convolutions about the elusive Sudanese buyer had the same status.

Judge Sandile Ngcobo was delicate enough not to say so outright, but the panel was justified in wondering whether the farm managers did not want to perjure themselves if they backed up their boss. This is not to blur distinctions between information and evidence or reverse an onus. It is to expect full and frank answers and at least explain why, in providing his own account, he could not back it up.

On the other hand, we have rapacious economic illiterates and their opportunist enthusiasts in the D-teams of the professions: a scoundrelly choir of crooks, ethno-supremacists and demagogues whose lives are the antithesis of the expired revolutionary jargon they espouse. They despise Ramaphosa because, under him, the economy is not redistributed to them.

They seize upon the Ngcobo report’s findings like a drunkard at the last dregs of another man’s beer, seeking courage for a fight. These starter-pack constitutionalists are the very people who usually respond to opinions of jurists the way Donald Trump treats elections.

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And here we are, stuck between an ineffectual, entitled politician and those who want Ramaphosa gone mainly so that they may resume their thieving ways.

When the ANC took over the levers of power in 1994, there was a sense that they were making sacred once again what the National Party had profaned. The state was the guarantor of order, the enforcer, equally, of just laws. Parliament expressed the will of all the people. The judiciary was an instrument of the rule of law, unbeholden to any race or class. The Treasury held the people’s monies safe, departments served all communities.

Above all, the president represented the honour of the nation, a person beyond reproach, who not only observed the letter of laws but also their spirit: a moral as much as a political being.

Under Nelson Mandela, institutions democrats had previously derided became sacred, and good people entered them. New institutions like the Constitutional Court were sanctified. In Parliament, previous Bantustan leaders joined apartheid true believers, joined Robben Islanders, joined Quatro Camp torturers. It is not that anyone’s flaws fell away, but the new institutions promised the highest standard of conduct going forward.

But through the Mbeki and Zuma years, the newly sacred became profane. To become “filthy rich” was to rise higher in the ranks of the liberation movement. To harass and vilify critics and replace them with cronies became the “prerogative” of the Leader. Amandla became Nkandla, the Union Buildings shifted to Saxonwold, Zuma morphed into Zupta, Hawks transmigrated into Hyenas.

Mandela died. How quaint it seems now that Pallo Jordan resigned for not correcting his appellation. Ahmed Kathrada refused to be buried by Zuma’s hand.

And then Ramaphosa came claiming from on high that the nightmare would be drenched in a new dawn. The old cabal of warriors resurfaced to supposedly makes things right. The National Prosecuting Authority promised to actually charge people. Everywhere the nation rang to the sound of “thuma mina”.  

The choice at the ANC conference was between hanging on by the fingernails or falling off the precipice. Civil society sure wasn’t going to save us, having traded any mass organisation pretensions for funding-proposal writing. An overhyped and mythical left arising from social movements or unions to rescue us all had also long disappeared into the sectarian night.

But once entrusted with leadership, Ramaphosa was neglectful of the proprieties of being a head of state. Such as not running a business, especially one in an industry notorious for money laundering and tax evasion.

Worse, more popular than the ANC itself, he neglected to wield power against the scoundrels of his party. And so, ensconced within, they pounced. And now the nation hangs on a definition of paid work, prima facie or sufficient evidence. If bad faith was not shown legally, impeachment should fail. But, bad faith morally lies dung-heap deep against all of us who now hope for the best of the worst, which defines every inch of support Ramaphosa enjoys.

We, who came of age in the 1980s, have had to set the bar lower and lower every year. Our moral judgements erode day by day. As we see the Stalingrad-lite defence of Ramaphosa unfold, we must embrace hypocrisy as we retweet strained and insolent critiques of the Ngcobo section 89 report. 

Those who fancy they are protecting democracy by supporting Ramaphosa were slow out of the blocks. But Ramaphosa benefitted in the NEC because of this support. Whether he will survive a ballot in Parliament depends on its secrecy and whether he wins in court depends on arcanities.

In this stampede, we dare not look downwards at what we have trampled upon through our lives. Into our 60s, it is usually a time to become more principled, more dogmatic about the values we hold dear. But, as we scramble to hold onto our pensions and pay a little extra for gap cover, to worry about grandkids and the future of this land, our moral horizons shrink.

No wonder many of us look high into the heavens for some salvation, for it is too ghastly to contemplate what has become of us. DM