Opinion | Ramaphosa’s silence is a danger to SA

As vigilantes target illegal immigrants, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s waiting game risks repeating the horrors of 2008. In December 2012, then president Jacob Zuma listened to his advisers who said that the “markets” were not happy with his leadership and he needed a voice in his inner circle that industry would listen to. Those advisers plucked one Cyril Ramaphosa from relative political obscurity and thrust him onto the path of becoming president, a position he had long given up on when he was overlooked by Nelson Mandela for the position of deputy president in 1994.

All Ramaphosa had to do after being elected Zuma’s deputy, was to wait his turn. And wait he did. Waiting so silently that the country almost forgot he was there.

He turned waiting silently into an art. So much so that even after he became president, it seemed he forgot that he now had to act; to be proactive to get the country on the right track. Whenever immediate action is required of him with regards to one of his ministers, he waits.

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Right now he is waiting for something to help him sort out Social Development Minister Sisisi Tolashe, even when she has handed him scandal after scandal for which he could fire her. The issue that is top of the country’s agenda is one that has to do with undocumented immigrants being targeted for forced removal from the country by organisations that have decided this country’s main problem is caused by these immigrants. The president has mentioned the issue a couple of times in his speeches.

But he has said nothing new, besides the tired old line: “South Africa is not an island and it was assisted by many other countries in its journey to freedom.” That’s true. But this is useless information in the face of marauding amabutho under the leadership of self-appointed immigration officers Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma and Ngizwe Mchunu of March and March. The president continues to wait. Maybe he needs to be reminded that waiting for something to happen on this particular issue in the past, resulted in tragic circumstances for former president Thabo Mbeki and his government when Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave was burnt alive in 2008.

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