Ramaphosa staggering from crisis to crisis

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is lurching from one crisis to another. 

A trip to Brazil to meet fellow BRICs heads of state was interrupted on Sunday by explosive allegations against a key political ally.

A top police commissioner said a cabinet minister from the president’s party sabotaged probes into political assassinations.

It’s the latest challenge to the administration that Ramaphosa formed last year after his African National Congress lost its majority in parliament for the first time in three decades of rule, forcing him into a coalition with the business-friendly Democratic Alliance and other smaller parties.

They’ve been fighting ever since, including the DA debating a potential vote of no confidence in Ramaphosa last month after he fired a DA deputy minister for unauthorized travel.

It demanded he act against other ANC cabinet colleagues accused of corruption and the allegations on Sunday have raised those stakes.

“The president has set a bar,” said DA leader John Steenhuisen, referring to the firing of Deputy Trade Minister Andrew Whitfield. “Will he be able to hold his people to it?”

In addition to threatening the coalition, which investors are counting on to deliver economic reform, the allegations also show that the country has yet to move beyond more than a decade of state corruption in which members of the ANC were deeply implicated.

Rand Weakens

The rand traded weaker against the dollar on Monday, though analysts said that was linked to concern about fallout from US President Donald Trump’s trade war and his threat of additional tariffs on countries aligning with what he called “anti-American” BRICS policies.

In a statement late on Sunday night, the ANC expressed its concern about the allegations made against Police Minister Senzo Mchunu and said it had been assured that Ramaphosa was considering the matter.

Shortly afterward, Ramaphosa was forced to divert his attention from the trip to Rio de Janeiro to issue a statement, calling it a “matter of grave national security concern that is receiving the highest priority attention.”

Mchunu rejected the allegations as “baseless,” Police Ministry spokesman Kamogelo Mogotsi said in a statement.

The allegations by KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkwhanazi struck a chord in that he highlighted the violence that plagues South African politics.

Between 2000 and 2023 the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime documented 483 political killings in South Africa, according to Julian Rademeyer, who heads up the group’s operations in east and southern Africa. Of those 260 were in Mkwhanazi’s province, he said.

Ramaphosa’s most immediate concern will be to deal with the political fallout.

Since forming the coalition after elections in May 2024, Ramaphosa has fought to keep it together. The so-called government of national unity will endure, regardless of whether or not individual parties decide to walk away, he said on Monday before departing the BRICS summit.

Ramaphosa’s Confidence

Various parties “have expressed a view that they would like to participate in the government,” he said. “So I have confidence in the continued governance of our country going forward, in whatever shape or form.”

The ANC and DA have clashed over education and land legislation as well as the budget, but the allegations against the police minister are more serious and prompted bipartisan calls for action.

The DA has demanded a parliamentary debate on police corruption. The Inkatha Freedom Party, a fellow coalition partner, has sought a commission of inquiry and Mchunu’s suspension, while the main opposition uMkhonto weSizwe Party called for Mchunu’s arrest.

“Members of the government of national unity should say to Ramaphosa: If you don’t remove the minister we are out,” said Prince Mashele, an author and independent analyst.

“But they have their own considerations” to stay in government and retain power, he said.

Final Term 

For Ramaphosa the challenge extends beyond holding the coalition together.

His push to boost private participation in the economy faces significant opposition within his own party and Mchunu is firmly on his side in that fight. 

Ramaphosa is in his final term as party leader and is working to keep his faction in control in a 2027 leadership contest for which campaigning has already unofficially started. 

But given the ANC’s sliding support in the 2024 election, a bigger concern may be the impact of the allegations on public sentiment in a nation with one of the world’s highest murder rates and a corruption scourge that’s hobbled economic growth.

The World Bank estimates that crime curbs the country’s gross domestic product by a tenth. For now politicians, investors and the public’s eyes are on what Ramaphosa does next. 

“The president doesn’t really have any good options,” said Ziyanda Stuurman, a Cape Town-based analyst and author of a book on policing in South Africa.

“There just has to be a public statement from the president himself.”