By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has finally broken his silence, saying he deserves a second term, simply because he has laid a solid foundation that needs to be built upon during a second term.
Ramaphosa confirmed that he informed the ANC’s electoral committee that he accepted the nomination to serve as the governing party’s leader for another five years.
The ANC is due to hold its 55th national elective conference in mid-December at the Johannesburg Expo Centre in Nasrec. Ramaphosa is in a pole position for re-election in terms of branch nominations as he faces a challenge for the ANC’s presidency from his former Cabinet minister, Zweli Mkhize.
Ramaphosa was speaking to the media at the end of his two-day state visit to the UK on Thursday.
He said he believes that he deserves to continue in his role as the ANC and country’s president because his administration had introduced reforms to build state capacity after years of state capture and large-scale corruption under his predecessor, Jacob Zuma.
“I think what we have been doing for the past few years is to build a foundation to rebuild our country. When we came in, a lot of things were damaged.Things were not working as well as they should.
“A number of our institutions were captured as evidenced in the State Capture Commission and a number of reforms had to be embarked upon.”
Ramaphosa was, however, quick to add some of the progress in this endeavour had been hampered by the “huge challenges such as Covid-19, the unrests, and the floods [in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape]”.
The incumbent ANC leader received a boost in his quest to retain his position after 2 037 branches nominated him, giving more than double the 916 nominations received by Mkhize.
Ramaphosa has also described the Constitutional Court’s (ConCourt) ruling this week ordering the release of Chris Hani’s killer on parole as “very disappointing” and unfortunate.
Ramaphosa says he can only imagine the “heavy pain and the burden” that the Hani family is going through, following the apex court’s unanimous judgement on Monday for Janusz Walus to be freed from jail after almost 30 years behind bars.
“[The judgment] it is disappointing I must say. It’s very disappointing because Chris Hani was an iconic figure in our struggle and, in fact, if you look at it more carefully, our democracy in the end… was pivoted on the tragedy that our country went through when Chris Hani was killed,” Ramaphosa said.
Waluś, a Polish immigrant, was serving a life sentence at the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre in Pretoria for killing Hani outside his Boksburg home on 10 April 1993.
Ramaphosa said the anti-apartheid icon’s murder was “part of what spawned the democracy” South Africans enjoy today.
“I haven’t looked at the judgment closely myself [and] I would like to do so and see the reasoning,” he said. “One cannot but feel the pain that the Hani family and his widow, Limpho Hani, are going through.”