And then the lights went out. If ever a sign were needed that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s honeymoon is truly over, being plunged into darkness is it. One year into his presidency, Eskom, South Africa’s state electricity “provider”, has begun rolling blackouts across the industrialised nation of 56m people. This week, Eskom, which produces virtually all the country’s electricity, said it would cut 4,000 megawatts of power — its official capacity is 45,000MW — because of the unforeseen loss of six generating units.
Eskom’s announcement came just days after Mr Ramaphosa disclosed a plan to break the lossmaking entity into three divisions (generation, transmission and distribution), raising suspicion of sabotage. Could the heavily unionised fiefdom be sending a message of displeasure about a reorganisation that could lead to job losses and privatisations? The alternative to sabotage is hardly more encouraging: Eskom has been so run down and mismanaged that its infrastructure is collapsing. It is a gargantuan $30bn in debt. Either way, Mr Ramaphosa is struggling to keep the lights on.
A year ago, Mr Ramaphosa, a former union boss turned tycoon, pushed Jacob Zuma out of office. That was supposed to draw a line under nine years of galloping corruption and “state capture”, the systematic ransacking of institutions to facilitate the plunder of state resources. The hope among millions of South Africans, alarmed that their country was becoming a mafia state, was that Mr Ramaphosa could reverse the rot. Such was the relief, they called it “Ramaphoria”. Since then, both the scale of Mr Ramaphosa’s task and the formidable obstacles in his path have become all too apparent. Call it the “Ramaphications” of South Africa’s sorry slide.
In the past year, evidence has spilled out of just how riddled with corruption the South African state has become. At the so-called Zondo Commission of inquiry, Angelo Agrizzi gave lurid evidence of bribes handed out like “monopoly money” to government officials. Mr Agrizzi, former chief operating officer of Bosasa, a domestic logistics company, filmed himself in a vault full of cash from which he said up to $444,000 was doled out in payouts every month.
Mr Agrizzi told the inquiry, testimony from which was beamed live across a drop-jawed nation, that he funnelled a monthly $22,000 to Mr Zuma through the president’s close friend Dudu Myeni, the former chair of South African Airways. Under her watch, the state airline careered Eskom-like towards bankruptcy. Both Mr Zuma and Ms Myeni have consistently denied wrongdoing.
News has come thick and fast. Just this month, the board of the Public Investment Corporation, the state pension fund manager, resigned en masse after a whistleblower accused four of its nine board members of wrongdoing. The fund, which manages $145bn of assets on behalf of millions of retired civil servants, teachers and nurses, has been accused of investing money in businesses linked to politically connected figures in the African National Congress. Dan Matjila, who quit as PIC chief executive last November, vehemently denies that the PIC acted improperly.
Allegations of corruption cut to the core of the ANC, which has run South Africa uninterrupted for 25 years since the end of apartheid. Senior members of the party, some of whom remain in the cabinet, have been accused of receiving bribes. Just as important, the culture of corruption has metastasised throughout the movement, reaching the municipal and district levels. KwaZulu-Natal, where Mr Zuma retains enormous popularity, has been racked by gangland-style killings as local ANC cadres fight to retain their grip over state resources.
Mr Ramaphosa has made some headway. He has swept out the previously compromised management at many of the state-owned entities. He has appointed a new director of public prosecutions to an organisation that, under its previous leadership, could be counted on to leave close associates of Mr Zuma alone. At the annual state of the nation address this month, Mr Ramaphosa said he would set up a unit to investigate allegations of state capture. No one, he pledged, would be immune from prosecution. His hope is to do enough to secure a strong mandate in May’s general elections. After that he should have more power to root out the dirt and take on vested interests.
One thing should have become obvious. The rot goes much deeper than the Gupta family, whose influence over Mr Zuma was at the heart of state capture allegations. The Guptas became a bogeyman, not to say a scapegoat. But if the ANC wants to see the true cause of South Africa’s deep-seated problems, it should look in the mirror. Assuming, of course, there is sufficient light.
