Ramaphosa E-Book

Ray Hartley

• Herausgeber: Jonathan Ball
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

In Ramaphosa: Path to Power veteran journalist Ray Hartley reveals how Cyril Ramaphosa pulled off one of the greatest political comebacks of modern times, and what lies in store for the new president as he embarks on a hefty clean-up operation of a country in shambles. Ray Hartley's bestselling 2017 biography, Ramaphosa: The Man Who Would Be King, offered a cogent analysis of how the former nearly-man of South African politics handled the key challenges he faced in the unions, in business and in politics. In this updated edition, Hartley questions whether the former 'man in the middle' can lead from the front, now that he has publicly denounced the besmirched Zuma and his corrupted ANC and established himself as a worthy recipient of the country's top job. So begins a new era in South African politics. As he takes the helm in 2018, Ramaphosa faces his biggest challenge yet: fixing a broken economy, weeding out Zuma's corrupt cronies in government and, finally, delivering on his promise of a better life for the poor majority. This fully revised edition also includes a new introduction and an additional chapter that covers the most recent developments in Ramaphosa's career and in South African politics.

Leseprobe

RAY HARTLEY

Ramaphosa

Path to power

Jonathan Ball Publishers

Johannesburg & Cape Town

Contents

Dedication

List of abbreviations

Introduction

ONE: Consciousness

TWO: The man who sat across the table

THREE: Mandela’s chosen one

FOUR: The big deal

FIVE: The commanding heights of business

SIX: The depths of Marikana

SEVEN: Return to politics

EIGHT: Crisis point

NINE: To the front line

TEN: Turbulent ascent

ELEVEN: Twelve days in February

Acknowledgements

Select bibliography

Notes

About the Book

About the author

Also by Ray Hartley

Imprint Page

To Zoë,

bringer of hope, light and life

List of abbreviations

AmcuAssociation of Mineworkers and Construction Union

ANCAfrican National Congress

AsgiSAAccelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa

AzactuAzanian Confederation of Trade Unions

CodesaConvention for a Democratic South Africa

CosatuCongress of South African Trade Unions

CusaCouncil of Unions of South Africa

DADemocratic Alliance

EFFEconomic Freedom Fighters

FosatuFederation of South African Trade Unions

Gear Growth, Employment and Redistribution

HCIHosken Consolidated Investments

MawuMetal and Allied Workers Union

NailNew Africa Investments Limited

NECnational executive committee

NedlacNational Economic Development and Labour Council

NPNational Party

NPANational Prosecuting Authority

NUMNational Union of Mineworkers

NumsaNational Union of Metalworkers of South Africa

NusasNational Union of South African Students

NWCnational working committee

PACPan Africanist Congress

RDPReconstruction and Development Programme

SAASouth African Airways

SACPSouth African Communist Party

SactuSouth African Congress of Trade Unions

SaftuSouth African Federation of Trade Unions

SancoSouth African National Civic Organisation

SAPSSouth African Police Service

SARSSouth African Revenue Service

SasoSouth African Students’ Organisation

SCMStudent Christian Movement

UDFUnited Democratic Front

Introduction

Suddenly, Ramaphosa was grinning. But just as quickly the smile disappeared and he was touching my sleeve conspira­torially: ‘I am an enigma, you know.’ – Anthony Butler

Cyril Ramaphosa raised his right hand and took the oath of office as president of South Africa on 15 February 2018, two months after he narrowly won office as president of the ruling ANC.

To most South Africans, Ramaphosa represented an opportunity to reverse the nation’s slide under Jacob Zuma. He pledged himself to a restoration of clean governance, a return to the rule of law and a faster pace of economic growth that would finally address the country’s youth unemployment disaster.

Ramaphosa had taken power, but he remained an enigma. His first Cabinet was both a sweeping change and more of the same. He removed a swathe of Zuma’s lackeys and took firm control of the financial heart of government but inexplicably retained other Zuma loyalists, even some who were universally regarded as incompetent. He retained the weak and impotent head of public prosecutions who had protected Zuma until the eleventh hour, but he acted decisively against the tax boss associated with Zuma.

The questions were many. What did Ramaphosa stand for? What motivated him? How would he govern? What were his real priorities?

It is not my objective to provide a comprehensive account of Ramaphosa’s life. This has, in any event, been done by Anthony Butler in his admirable biography, Cyril Ramaphosa. Nor do I make any claim to illuminating the deep psychological motives that may or may not shape Ramaphosa’s public persona, or that of others in the political limelight, intriguing though such a work might be.

Instead, I plan to stick to my knitting – the cut and thrust of politics, the great game that shapes the fortunes and destinies of nations. This is what interests me, and this is the craft that I have spent my working life refining as a journalist observing the unfolding of the great South African political spectacle. From the dying kicks of apartheid to the birth of the new democratic order and the emergence of new maladies, many of which were not anticipated, South Africa’s political story has been compelling. So much is at stake.

It was once a simpler story, in which the demons of apartheid fought to the death with the angels of the anti-apartheid struggle. But it has evolved into something far more complex and difficult, although the old pattern persists of seeing its players as either demons or angels.

In the amusing preface to his biography, Butler recounts the game of cat-and-mouse he played to get Ramaphosa’s coope­ration during a meeting at his Sandton offices: ‘Suddenly Ramaphosa was grinning. But just as quickly the smile disappeared and he was touching my sleeve conspiratorially: “I am an enigma, you know.”’1 I first encountered Ramaphosa when I served as the minutes secretary of Working Group Two in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) negotiations over the shape of a post-apartheid South Africa. Ramaphosa served on that committee, and it is no exaggeration to say that the sheer force of his personality and his tactical nous drove those negotiations to their successful conclusion.

If there is one thing that has defined Ramaphosa’s political life, it is the description ‘negotiator’. Success in negotiations requires charm and charisma, but it also requires a ruthless eye for the opponent’s weaknesses and an ability to strike a deal at a moment when you have reduced those sitting across the table to a state where they will accept the compromise that you offer on your terms.

Ramaphosa would become the lead negotiator for the African National Congress (ANC), the country’s largest and most influential liberation movement, at talks over the end of apartheid and the writing of a new constitution. He would demonstrate his negotiating prowess by cowing the ANC’s main opponent, the National Party (NP), which had ruled the country for over 40 years, into agreeing to free, unqualified elections for a fully democratic state that would be governed by a progressive constitution. This was not the accomplishment of an accommodator so much as the product of Ramaphosa’s negotiating prowess. He got the turkeys to vote for Christmas.

But once the ink had dried on the Interim Constitution and Nelson Mandela was set to become South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Ramaphosa found himself politically sidelined. The ANC chose his rival, Thabo Mbeki, to be Mandela’s successor. Ramaphosa, who cut his teeth in the trade union movement and the mass internal struggle against apartheid, came from a tradition of robust and open democratic practice. Trade union congresses were held in public and there were sometimes raucous contestations for leadership roles. Mbeki came from the exile tradition where operations were clandestine and information was shared on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. Leadership decisions were taken behind closed doors and complete unity presented to the outside world.

Mbeki’s presidency and that of his successor, Jacob Zuma, saw the application of this exile mindset to national politics, and the opacity of the ANC sat uneasily with the transparency, accountability and openness of the Constitution of the republic.

The question everyone was asking as Ramaphosa took office in the Union Buildings was this: can the man in the middle lead from the front? In other words, can Ramaphosa disrupt the political narrative, transforming it from one of fear and rumour into one of hope and optimism? Can Ramaphosa drag the ANC out of the shadows and turn it into a modern political force that operates comfortably in a constitutional democracy?

This book attempts to answer these questions by looking at how Ramaphosa has handled the key challenges he has faced in the trade union movement, in business and in politics. These questions are not easy to answer because Ramaphosa remains one of the best-kept secrets in South African politics, seldom offering anything of himself beyond carefully considered public statements.

One of those I spoke to before writing this book was former mining executive Bobby Godsell. As a young man, Godsell sat opposite Ramaphosa during negotiations over wages and working conditions on Anglo American mines. He worked with Ramaphosa on the National Peace Accord, and encountered him again when Anglo entered into the first big empowerment deal of the democratic era, the sale of Johnnic to a consortium of black investors led by Ramaphosa. ‘Remember,’ Godsell told me, ‘he’s a man of many parts.’ Ramaphosa came from a middle-class background – his father was a policeman. And then he had studied law. ‘Law and politics are often pretty connected,’ remarked Godsell.

Ramaphosa is a fascinating subject because he spans so many of the territories where this story has unfolded. He was a student leader. He was critically involved in the struggle against apartheid as a trade unionist. And then he became the key figure at the constitutional talks to shape the new democratic order. He exited formal politics to build a business empire, and then returned to the political coalface only to find that the machinery he had helped put in place was badly in need of repair. Of course, the fact that he has now become president of the republic makes him all the more intriguing a subject.

He is at once charming and reserved. He defers to authority and yet he projects authority. He is driven to navigate the country’s destiny and yet, at times, appears helplessly afloat on the tide. What does he stand for? The answer is at once in plain sight and obscured by clouds of circuitous reasoning.

*

Let us start where all political narratives should, with the greater context. This is the age of disruption. Wherever you care to look, you will see traditional political paradigms collapsing and a new raw politics emerging. Propelling this is a rising tide of anger at the failure of the establishment – as often a settled democratic order as an authoritarian one – to deliver answers to a set of core problems that are the result of the way the world of work is changing. Rationalisation, outsourcing and vast increases in productivity have been followed by the appearance of machines and algorithms that can do the tasks that once employed millions and fed their families. Economic certainties about the ability of democratic capitalism to deliver a rising level of prosperity for the ordinary person have been smashed by a succession of financial crises and by the fact that the wealth effect has not benefited the vast majority of people.

At the same time, the capacity of a society to insulate itself from these effects, or from the social or economic collapse of other states, has lessened as the world has become more integrated. In the US, Donald Trump took office – somewhat disingenuously – as a man of the people who wished to overturn the political applecart. What got him elected was that he could credibly argue that he was not part of the government that had presided over two decades of wealth accumulation without the benefits being spread to ordinary people. In the UK, a similar revolt against the old ways of doing things by those on the receiving end of failed economic policies saw, first, a vote in favour of leaving the European Union – the so-called Brexit vote – and, second, a surprising electoral swing against Conservative prime minister Theresa May and towards Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, until then regarded as unelectable. In France, the traditional parties were swept aside by Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche! movement. Long before these disruptions, across North Africa, the Arab Spring had come and gone. Governments that had been entrenched for decades were toppled and turmoil was now raging over the next generation of leadership. This global tide of disillusionment with the established order also found its way to South Africa, where the problems are, if anything, starker.

South Africa, though blighted by colonialism and then by apartheid, has had a more hopeful recent history than many other nations. In 1994, Nelson Mandela became the country’s first democratic president, promising to heal the country’s wounds and usher in a new age of prosperity. Mandela has been buried, his successor, Thabo Mbeki, has become a bitter observer of the decline in government performance, and Jacob Zuma became mired in a succession of scandals that would have brought most leaders to their knees in a functional democracy.

The South Africa that Ramaphosa seeks to lead is no longer the Rainbow Nation of Mandela. A trend towards corruption and cronyism, which began not long after the advent of the democratic era, was rapidly accelerated during Zuma’s nine years in office.

The Gupta family, which had close business ties with Zuma via his relatives, inserted its cronies into government departments and state-owned enterprises, and milked public-sector infrastructure contracts for billions in a brazen act of ‘state capture’, the term used to describe the funnelling of state resources into private hands under Zuma’s watch.

Those parts of the post-apartheid media that survived politically connected takeovers were subject to constant threats of regulation by state tribunals and accused of attempting to bring about ‘regime change’ when they exposed graft and corruption.

There remained a vigorously independent section of the media that took on the role of publicly exposing the capture of the state. The judiciary remained independent, although the best judges in the world are mere ornaments if cases of graft are not brought before them. In civil society, veterans of the ruling ANC and activist NGOs loudly called for an end to state capture.

The official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), has attempted to pivot from being a party of the elite (with its former racial connotations lingering on) to one that could seriously challenge for power by winning the confidence of black voters, but has stumbled through its own crisis. Its leadership, struggling to reconcile a past of post-colonial smugness with a future as a party of transformation and economic growth, is convincing more and more voters but is a very long way away from being able to command a majority.

It would seem from this description that South Africa is fast becoming the ‘basket case’ that observers on the right have always believed it would. But this is not yet the case. Zuma may have gone a long way towards ruining the country’s democratic institutions, but they are still very much alive. The ANC itself showed it was aware of the danger of Zuma’s toxic state-capture project when it voted against his preferred successor and in favour of Ramaphosa at its December 2017 conference.

Zuma ignited the fire of rebellion when he tried to cut the party out of executive decision-making in favour of his circle of cronies and corrupt business associates. By the winter of 2017, Jacob Zuma’s presidency was entering its eighth year amid its biggest controversy – his firing of the Finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, a critic of state capture. Zuma’s familial relationship with the Gupta family had been widely criticised, most prominently by the Public Protector, Thuli Madonsela, who had called for a judicial inquiry into the scandal.

But Gordhan was more than just a victim of Zuma’s executive prejudices. He was the canary in the ANC’s coal mine. Zuma had for some time wanted to get rid of him, but had balked when it became apparent that this would not enjoy the support of large sections of the ruling party. Gordhan’s dismissal sent a signal to those in the ANC who were against Zuma but had accommodated him in the interests of projecting party unity. The signal was that it was time to step out of the shadows and take a stand. The fight for the soul of the ANC was under way.

After biding his time – perhaps for too long – Ramaphosa finally stepped up to lead the battle against state capture. To some he was a reluctant and opportunistic participant in the campaign. To others, Ramaphosa was studiously following the only path to power within the ANC, which has always viewed criticism as an assault by the ‘enemy’. What is important is that the context in which Ramaphosa has returned to politics is fraught.

The fight against Zuma and his business cronies was a rebellion against corruption and the capturing of the state, but it also had an important ideological dimension. To understand this, it is necessary to go back to Zuma’s rise to power in September 2007. At the ANC’s Polokwane conference, Zuma overcame impossible odds to unseat Thabo Mbeki as party president. Mbeki had been accused of being ‘aloof’ and of failing to consult the party as he centralised decision-making in the executive. But cutting through the rejection of Mbeki was another dynamic. In 1996, Mbeki was the moving force behind the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy, a centrist macroeconomic platform that sought to place government finances on a sound footing by controlling expenditure, reducing the deficit and encouraging growth led by private-sector investment. Gear was the successor to the left-of-centre Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), which had been introduced by Nelson Mandela in 1994. The RDP envisioned the state as a more active agent in redistribution.

One of the reasons Zuma was able to dislodge Mbeki was that he promised an end to Gear’s conservative macroeconomic programme and a return to a more interventionist state. This sat well with the party’s left wing and its allies in the trade union movement and the South African Communist Party (SACP), who endorsed his campaign with gusto. The then head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Zwelinzima Vavi, famously proclaimed that opposing Zuma’s campaign for the presidency was like ‘trying to fight against the big wave of the tsunami’.2

In reality, Mbeki had already begun to change gears, as it were, adopting a new programme, the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA), which sought to fire up the economy by bolstering infrastructure spending. Having failed to consult the party thoroughly when he dropped the RDP in favour of Gear, he attempted to make up for this by consulting thoroughly on the introduction of AsgiSA. But it was too little, too late for the left, which saw Zuma as more likely to implement their more interventionist agenda. Of course, once Zuma was in power he shed these erstwhile allies one by one as he demonstrated that he was, if anything, more of a nationalist and a capitalist than Mbeki.

Exactly where Ramaphosa stood on this ideological continuum between the centrist fiscal discipline of Mbeki and the aggressive capitalist nationalism of Zuma was not immediately obvious when he returned to politics. But the outlines of a ‘Ramaphosa way’ began to emerge as he waded deeper and deeper into the battle.

Ramaphosa won by a narrow margin, and his first actions in office showed that he was determined to turn the ship around. It was telling that he returned Nhlanhla Nene – fired by Zuma – to the Finance ministry and appointed Pravin Gordhan – another Zuma casualty – to head the Public Enterprises ministry. He was taking control of the financial levers with a view to returning the country to fiscal stability. He was closing the taps on the state capture enterprise, removing its ability to dispense patronage.

*

More than two decades of democracy have failed to deliver a significant change in the lives of many who were supposed to be liberated after 1994. It is not true, as some assert, that for most people life under democracy is worse than under apartheid. More people than ever enjoy the benefits of piped water, electricity, housing, access to education and, vitally, access to the largest social welfare net in the developing world. But South Africa has manifestly failed to reach its full potential. The proportion of those unemployed, as a percentage of adults who might have jobs, is shockingly high, and the social welfare net does little more than file off the rough edges of poverty.

The single greatest achievement of post-apartheid South Africa has been the establishment of a large new middle class, which has benefited from affirmative action, black economic empowerment and growing civil service employment. By some reckonings, as many as 10 million black people entered the middle class in the roughly twenty years after the end of apartheid.3 But this middle class lives a precarious and highly indebted existence that is threatened by the state’s diminishing access to revenue. While advancement in the job market has benefited the middle class, the youth have struggled to find a place in the new establishment. A failing education system and an economy that continues to shed jobs has led to a rise in youth unemployment. The middle class finds itself increasingly having to fund education, health and security privately, while new taxes, such as the much-hated e-toll system on Gauteng’s roads, have caused them to turn on the establishment.

The rising tide of graft and cronyism has contributed to this rebellion in two ways: it has reduced the state’s ability to deliver services, and it has removed opportunities for advancement and entrepreneurship from all but a small sliver of politically connected people. The ruling ANC, once regarded as politically unassailable, has begun to take on water, suffering electoral losses in key metropoles such as Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay, having already lost the elements of the black middle class it once relied on in the coloured community in the Western Cape and among many Indian South Africans. The party’s response has been to circle the wagons and promise more ‘radical economic transformation’, a policy that will further cement the defection of the black middle class, which now has assets and desires economic stability.

Ramaphosa is acutely aware that the ANC needs to demonstrate an improvement in the lives of ordinary people if it is to win back its lost support in the metropolitan areas.

The stage has been set for someone to grasp the nettle and lead the country out of this crisis. Into this fractured and disrupted political context steps our protagonist, Cyril Ramaphosa.

ONE

Consciousness

When I was in detention, I came to realise that friends are like teabags. You boil the water. And you use them once. – Cyril Ramaphosa

Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa was born on 17 November 1952 in Johannesburg. It was a momentous year for South African politics. The ANC – then still legal – would launch its Defiance Campaign, the first major national mass resistance campaign against apartheid. The National Party had been in power for just over four years, and centuries of racial discrimination were now being codified in legislation that unashamedly handed whites control over every aspect of black lives. Among apartheid’s many humiliations was the requirement that blacks carry passes in the urban areas; the public burning of these passbooks would be a key feature of the campaign. It was also the 300th anniversary of the arrival of Dutch official Jan van Riebeeck at the Cape, signifying the start of colonial rule.

Ramaphosa began his schooling in the Western Native Township, near Johannesburg. When he was just ten years old, his family was moved from that township to Soweto, where he attended Tshilidzi Primary School in Chiawelo. He completed his school­ing at Sibasa in Venda in 1971.

The young Ramaphosa had already demonstrated a defiant attitude towards apartheid. Anthony Butler records how Ramaphosa responded to the deferential treatment accorded to whites during a school event at Mukumbai, the chief’s kraal in Sibasa: ‘The senior police officer present, Captain Madzena, treated the whites with the then customary exaggerated deference. He gave priority to their needs and accommodated their wishes, leading them to the front of the crowd. Such favours would have been accepted by them and others present as quite natural.

‘Cyril, however, emerged visibly upset from the crowd and began to complain eloquently that this was the chiefs’ place. “Why”, he asked, “must whites be given preference over Africans, even here, at the expense of the true owners of the place?” ’1

*

Cyril Ramaphosa’s politics were forged during the 1970s in the furnace of the struggle against apartheid. When most South Africans think of the struggle, they recall the Soweto uprising of 1976 as its seminal moment. There were, in fact, many aspects of the 1970s that made it a decade distinct from the decade of open mass mobilisation that was the 1980s.

The ANC had been severely damaged by the apartheid state in the 1960s; with its leadership imprisoned on Robben Island and its organisational machinery in exile, the party had a very low profile within the country. If black South Africans looked to a leader, they were as likely to choose Stephen (Steve) Bantu Biko as they were to choose Nelson Mandela or the ANC’s exiled leader, OR Tambo.

Biko was the leading figure in the Black Consciousness Movement. As a student, he had been a member of the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), which had adopted an anti-apartheid stance but which relied on the support of the mostly white student population. When Biko attended a student conference at Rhodes University in Grahamstown in July 1967,2 he was informed that the white and Indian students would sleep in dormitories while black students were expected to sleep in a church. Biko and others walked out of Nusas and decided that, rather than be part of so-called non-racial movements, blacks needed to organise on their own and develop a consciousness of their social programme that was not affected by the interventions of other more privileged races. This was the basis of the Black Consciousness philosophy. Biko would define Black Consciousness as follows:

Black Consciousness is in essence the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression – the blackness of their skin – and to operate as a group in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude. It seeks to demonstrate the lie that black is an aberration from the ‘normal’ which is white. It is a manifestation of a new realization that by seeking to run away from themselves and to emulate the white man, blacks are insulting the intelligence of whoever created them black. Black Consciousness, therefore takes cognizance of the deliberateness of God’s plan in creating black people black.3

He went on to say that Black Consciousness ‘seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life … Blacks are out to completely transform the system and to make of it what they wish. Such a major undertaking can only be realized in an atmosphere where people are convinced of the truth inherent in their stand. Liberation therefore is of paramount importance in the concept of Black Consciousness, for we cannot be conscious of ourselves and yet remain in bondage. We want to attain the envisioned self which is a free self.’4

Biko and his fellow activists formed the South African Students’ Organisation (Saso), which was launched at the University of the North – an institution designated for black learners.

*

In 1972, Cyril Ramaphosa began his studies at the University of the North, known as ‘Turfloop’. His political development would unfold in an environment similar to that which had inspired Biko. As Butler writes, Turfloop and other ‘black’ universities drew students from relatively financially stable households, and graduates were expected to become cooperative members of the homeland civil service or the parts of the apartheid state that required black administrators: ‘Racial domination was evident in every aspect of the students’ lives outside the university, and it was reproduced within it too. The universities were dominated by an Afrikaner bureaucracy at the level of the rectorate, the council and senate. The academic staff, especially at senior levels, was over­whelmingly white.’5

While at university, Ramaphosa became involved with the Student Christian Movement (SCM) and immediately began to transform it into an activist organisation. He and a young Frank Chikane – who would go on to head the South African Council of Churches before becoming Director General in the Presidency under Thabo Mbeki – saw to it that the SCM was restructured and that a new constitution was developed. Butler observes: ‘He produced a new constitution, and his fellow members were obliged to debate its contents endlessly. In this constitution, Cyril inserted a “doctrinal basis” section that explicitly repudiated racism and the unjust system of apartheid. Cyril’s trademark success in creating a new institution was based on careful drafting of the constitution, careful strategic planning, and relentless persuasiveness in public and private meetings.’6

When the apartheid state cracked down on Saso in 1974, the SCM stepped into the breach on the Turfloop campus and Ramaphosa moved to the front of the political firing line. The apartheid state paid lip service to legal formality, but it was a de facto police state, capable of severe repression and even political killings. Enemies were identified and subjected to brutal treatment. In Ramaphosa’s case, he was held in solitary confinement in Pretoria Central Prison for 11 months. Solitary confinement was a savage extra-legal punishment meted out to those on whom the police did not have sufficient evidence to convict in court. Frances Baard, a trade union organiser from Kimberley jailed in 1960, described her experience of solitary confinement:

I wouldn’t wish for anybody to spend a whole year in solitary confinement. Really, it is a terrible thing. You sit and think. Walk to the window. The window was right up; I had to stand on something – the toilet was next to the window – so I could stand on the toilet to see a little hole there at the window. And you still don’t see anything because the cell was downstairs, underground. You stay there in that cell, sit for a while, and then walk for a while. It was quite a big cell. Then I sit again. Sometimes I would sing some songs. You talk to yourself but you don’t know what to say! You hear people talking outside but you can’t even see them.7

Detention without trial could mean spending ‘a whole year without anything to read and no one to talk to. And a light on in the cell all the time. All day and at night too, the light on. You can’t sleep.’8

The most high-profile victim of this form of punishment was Biko himself. In the wake of the Soweto uprising and growing national ferment, Biko was arrested on 18 August 1977 outside Grahamstown. He was detained in Port Elizabeth, where he was subjected to brutal interrogation by security policemen. On 11 September, the gravely injured Biko was moved to Pretoria Central Prison, where he died on 12 September.9

Anthony Butler quotes Ramaphosa on his bleak period in detention: ‘I never benefited from sitting down and having political discourse with fellow detainees and comrades. It is something I still feel I regret deeply. Those who were in a group with other people were able to strengthen each other, to have discussions on a whole variety of things, and I didn’t have that opportunity because I was on my own.’10 Ramaphosa did not talk about detention, except once when he said: ‘When I was in detention, I came to realise that friends are like teabags. You boil the water. And you use them once.’11

Detention without trial was politically destabilising, too. Those whom the authorities did not charge were sometimes believed to have turned state witness against those on trial. Of course, such beliefs would be laid to rest once the trial began and the detained person did not appear as a witness, but by then a lot of damaging anxiety had been created.

The Black Consciousness poet Tshenuwani Farisani, described by Butler as ‘a major influence on Cyril’s political thought’,12 was a victim of brutality in detention. Farisani’s story, although harrowing, was typical of the experience of many black South Africans. In 1951, when he was four years old, his family was uprooted from the fertile Songozi Tsapila area of Louis Trichardt without compensation. The family would be removed again in 1959 and in 1961. Farisani became an articulate voice for the oppressed, expressing the pain caused by apartheid in his writing. In 1996, he would tell the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of his harrowing experience while being held in detention: ‘The four detentions …  affected me as a person, affected my wife, my parents, my children, my sister, my relatives and my friends. And in this process friendships have been broken, family ties have been shattered and my father died without enjoying the freedom that I am enjoying today. He died with hope but he never lived to realise that hope.’13

Farisani recounted: ‘I was made to do press-ups, to stand on my head, how can I stand on my top, you know I was very stout? They took me and made me stand on my head and then they kicked me. They boxed me as I was just like that. You know those people were very powerful. Imagine picking somebody like me, you know, they threw me up, throwing me down again on the cement, on concrete cement … You know there are scars here on my knees, the head was very swollen. I was given a cloth to take blood from the floor. I was made to use the cloth in wiping the blood from the face and even the body.’14

Ramaphosa had first met Farisani when he visited his school to address its debating society on the topic ‘Knowledge is more important than money’.15 In 1975, Farisani addressed the Black People’s Convention, of which he was president: ‘Blacks, courageous sons and daughters of Mother Africa, I commend you for your courage, for your determination and for your undaunted zeal to stand against all odds, natural and man-made, for the sake of your liberation and that of your country. POWER TO THE PEOPLE. POWER TO THE STRUGGLE. Persistence and fortitude are the pinnacles of a successful struggle. Azania shall be free and soon.’16

Ramaphosa’s proximity to the Black Consciousness leadership resulted in a second period of detention under the Terrorism Act in 1976, following the Soweto student uprising. He was held for six months in Johannesburg Central Police Station, known until 1998 as John Vorster Square. The building had been named after John Vorster, the architect of South Africa’s security legislation as Minister of Justice under Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. By the time Ramaphosa was held in this notorious building – eight activists are known to have died while being held there – Vorster had been prime minister for ten years.

Once he had completed his studies at Turfloop, Ramaphosa became a clerk for a firm of Johannesburg attorneys, completing his BProc degree in 1981. By then he was already contemplating a career outside the law – in both senses.

In September 1980, the Council of Unions of South Africa (Cusa) was formed, incorporating nine affiliated trade unions. The launch of the new federation was attended by a large number of Soweto politicians. A Soweto Civic Association spokesman said: ‘Everybody in Soweto is a worker. Whatever the difference in our living standards, we have that in common.’17 Ramaphosa was drawn to the Black Consciousness-leaning federation, where he became a legal adviser.

But, even as he began working for the union movement, the political ground was shifting under South Africans’ feet. The ANC, whose role in sparking the 1976 uprising had been minimal, had nonetheless been its major beneficiary. Young people being hunted down by the apartheid police, or wanting to make a more serious contribution to the struggle, had crossed South Africa’s borders in search of the exiled liberation movements. Once across the border, they found that the Africanist movements that could be said to be kin to Black Consciousness, such as the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), were in disarray. By contrast, the ANC had offices, an infrastructure supported by sympathetic governments and a guerilla army in training. The ANC was soon recruiting a force of ‘highly motivated and well-educated (in contrast to the recruits of the early 1960s) saboteurs’, the historian Tom Lodge observes.18