“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” These famous words were said by one of the 20th century’s greatest political leaders, Sir Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940 before his newly formed cabinet and in the House of Commons as the German threat loomed large over Europe. At the time the 3 million Nazi German forces under the leadership of Adolf Hitler were sweeping through Europe with Belgium and France being the next to fall under awesome might of the German military strength. The fate of the Western World lied in the hands of Churchill, who using the mastery of words, the ability to read both domestic and international enemies and an ability to woe political allies in the commons and across the pond, managed to save the world from a Nazi ordained world order. 

Churchill for all his mistakes and short-comings (man there were many) did what few people in history could do. He met his country’s and world’s moment of great crisis, with a resolve, and a sense of agency and an urgency required to this day, long after his death. The world all over is shaped very much in the image he helped cultivate with US president, F.D. Roosevelt and Soviet Union Leader, Joseph Stalin. 

You may be asking what does Churchill have to do with this moment that  South Africa finds itself? Simple, given how deep South Africa’s economic and socio-political challenges are, the kind of leadership we have experienced under Cyril Ramaphosa and his government has been poor to say the least. If you read economic reports on unemployment, poverty and other social ills, it is clear that we are at war and are required of a wartime president who appreciates the moment we are in. Churchill had a great sense of the times and what was required to move the British people to action. He too faced great political threats to his power at home, with members of his own party, in his on war cabinet threatening to collapse his government if he did not seek appeasement with Nazi Germany. 

Ramaphosa is in many ways in a similar boat, with some members of the National Executive Committee already calling for his resignation, over counter-allegations of corruption over his CR17 campaign for the ANC presidency. Ramaphosa is a man pressed on every end. If he moves aggressively against his own comrades, he risks raising the ire of his political foes and starring the toxic martyrdom that saw the rise of Jacob Zuma and the downfall of Thabo Mbeki. However, if he stays silent, he risks to further entrench notions that he is weak and that the ANC’s fragile stability is far more important than restoring South Africa’s moral centre. 

These two options are difficult choices to make, if at all the choice between the two is the only option he has. Allow me to present a third option, he must and can do both. He has to deal with his comrades as way to cleanse the ANC of the rot, after all the ANC is the source of his power. He cannot ignore the institutional influence the ANC has over the political system we have had in place since 1994. Nonetheless, to do this he, the president must get over the trauma of losing out to Mbeki in the 90s and he now must move not like one who is courting power but one who has it! 

South Africa does not need Ramaphosa the Negotiator but Ramaphosa the tactful political mover, who is willing and able to act and truly build a new social compact for change. Let me be frank, I do not think Ramaphosa at this moment in time carries the kind of agency and urgency Churchill had in Britain's  darkest hour and frankly South Africa is in its darkest hour, with many political analysts making the argument that South Africa shows signs of a failing state. 

However, the optimist in me is still hopeful that all is not lost. That Africa’s most industrialised economy can turn things around, but the President must be willing to die at the battleground. He must be willing to court death in the pursuit to bring life to the South African dream. Covid-19 has made more urgent the need for the president to act against those who are corrupt. While also implementing microeconomic and macroeconomic reforms. Further more he needs to implement social reforms, in a world where the fourth industrial revolution has knocked down the doors of policy formulation, to deal with the uncomfortable questions about a changing global economy, and how that will impact countries like South Africa that depend on labour intensive industries to keep families fed and the fiscus running. Moreover, if the global geo-politics involving three South Africa’s key trading powers, The United States, the EU and China, make more key the need for a kind of leadership in Africa, that can bring forth the needs and interests of the African economy to the forefront of global issues, in a time where trade wars, cyberwars and in some cases proxy wars are being waged by the major powers of the world. So let me venture and state it unequivocally, Africa needs strong South African leadership! Will Ramaphosa stand up and grab the bull by the horns? Can he declare that powerful statement that echoes through the ages? “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat!”