Cyril couldn’t squeeze through the eye of the needle after all

It is said that new recruits to the ANC are required, among other things, to familiarise themselves with the party’s Through The Eye Of A Needle document. This is a basic guide on the criteria members need to follow when choosing leaders from branch right through to the national level.

In recent days, one has had reason to wonder if party members ever had a look at the biblical verse that inspired the title of this document when they elected Cyril Ramaphosa – by all accounts one of the country’s richest men – as their president at Nasrec five years ago. I am in no way likening the ascendency to the ANC top job to the heavenly kingdom but the good book does say it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man.

Money and Ramaphosa’s presidential ambitions have never lived comfortably together, not in an ANC that – until maybe a decade ago – believed in maintaining some socialistic public pretence. So there were always those in the party ranks who, while eager to elect him over and over again as an additional National Executive Committee member at successive national conferences, believed the wealth he had acquired by venturing into the private sector disqualified him from being at the head of the National Democratic Revolution as president.

When in 2007 some, like the ANC’s Sandton branch, started talking up Ramaphosa’s name as a “compromise candidate” amid a battle between those backing then president Thabo Mbeki’s third-term bid and supporters of his main rival Jacob Zuma, the two camps often dismissed Ramaphosa as “too capitalist” to even stand a chance with the largely working-class branches.

But five years is an eternity in South African politics. The same Zuma crowd that had been dismissive of the bourgeois comrade were by 2012 courting Ramaphosa to be Msholozi’s running mate as the Nkandla politician fought off a challenge from his then deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe.

Of course the main calculation in the Zuma camp when they decided on Ramaphosa as deputy was that he’d help them fight off a perception that, under Zuma, the ANC had turned into a largely Nguni party. However, they were also persuaded to go with Ramaphosa because they thought, as a rich man, he’d give the Zuma administration a veneer of respectability and acceptability in the eyes of business.

While keenly aware of his presidential ambitions, the Zuma crowd believed it could manage Ramaphosa as he had no constituency within the party and would have to gain their approval to seek the top job when Zuma left.

They were horribly wrong and are still licking their wounds. He outplayed them, secretly starting his underground campaign and running it quietly for many months without the use of any of the party resources they controlled.

He could do so because he had an impressive war chest that enabled his campaign to avoid all the pitfalls that had crippled Motlanthe’s attempt at taking on Zuma five years ealier.

By his own account, Ramaphosa raised about R300m for his ANC presidential campaign. It is not known how much the other rival campaigns spent. Access to money may have helped Ramaphosa pull off what some had thought to be an impossible victory at Nasrec. It also weakened his authority once he took charge.

His stated intentions of rebuilding the ANC and ridding the party of corruption were put into question by claims he had used hundreds of millions “to buy” the conference.

Protestations from his supporters that the money was not used to “buy” votes, and was mostly for organising meetings and transporting and accommodating delegates often fell on sceptical ears.

Of course if there was “buying of delegates”, it could not have been limited to one camp. It seems an accepted fact in the ANC that a lot of money changes hands during conference.

However, once he was accused, it became almost impossible for Ramaphosa to lead the fight, as new president, against the influence of money in party structures.

Among the requirements set out in Through The Eye Of A Needle is that a leader should “lead by example” and be beyond reproach “in his social and political conduct”. Ramaphosa’s admission that he spent about R300m on his campaign did not set a good example for those who thought he’d usher in a period of renewal.

As the next conference approaches, his presidency hangs in the balance mainly because of the controversy surrounding the $580,000 stolen from his Phala Phala farm. Money may cause him to fail the “eye of the needle” test.