President Cyril Ramaphosa addresses delegates at Birchwood Hotel in Ekhuruleni, Johannesburg, 8 December 2025, during the 5th ANC NGC. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/ The Citizen As President Cyril Ramaphosa prepares to deliver the ANC’s January 8th statement at Moruleng Stadium in Rustenburg, North West, this weekend, one truth should weigh heavier than any scripted assurance: the party has little to celebrate on its 114th birthday. Downplaying the challenges facing the country and his party will not help.
After the shocking revelations at the Madlanga commission, it is clear South Africa does not suffer from a shortage of commissions of inquiry. It suffers from a shortage of consequences. With the commission nearing its conclusion, the country confronts a familiar danger – another costly, meticulous probe that risks being shelved, selectively quoted and ultimately neutralised by political resistance.
The Zondo commission already taught us the harshest lesson: uncovering the truth is possible, but truth without consequences is indistinguishable from silence. If Ramaphosa allows Madlanga’s recommendations to follow the same path, the political cost will not be abstract or deferred. It will be immediate, electoral and brutal – beginning with this year’s local government elections.
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The Zondo report explained state capture in clear terms. Those implicated were identified. Networks were exposed.
Recommendations were laid out. And then, almost nothing happened. A handful of prosecutions dragged on, key figures remained politically protected, some were redeployed and others resurfaced as power brokers.
The message was devastatingly clear: accountability in South Africa is negotiable, slow and optional for the powerful. This is the context in which Madlanga’s report will land – not as a clean slate, but as a test of whether the state has learned anything at all. Ramaphosa cannot afford another “implementation task team”, another inter-ministerial committee, or another vague assurance that “processes are under way”.
Those phrases have become the bureaucratic language of evasion. Three things must happen within months of the Madlanga findings being released. First, a prosecutorial timetable must be published, detailing which recommendations will lead to charges, which agencies are responsible, and by when.
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