Ramaphosa a 'process man, consensus builder but an avoidant leader', says Prof Makgoba

Former president Jacob Zuma’s leadership has been described as reminiscent of the popular song Killing Me Softly by Roberta Flack.

Zuma features in chapter four of Leadership for Transformation since the Dawn of South Africa’s Democracy by Prof Malegapuru Makgoba, which was launched on Wednesday at the University of Johannesburg.

Makgoba's seven-year tenure as the health ombud ended on May 31. During his time in office, he exposed an array of shocking scandals within the health fraternity, including the deplorable conditions of the Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital, the case of Shonisani Lethole, who died in appalling conditions at Thembisa Hospital in June 2020 shortly after tweeting then health minister Zweli Mkhize about his desperate plight.

His most high-profile investigation was into the Life Esidimeni tragedy, in which 144 psychiatric patients died from starvation and neglect after 1,500 patients were moved out of the private facility and into unlicensed NGOs to save the government money.

Known to never sugarcoat his words, Makgoba writes that Zuma’s middle name, Gedleyihlekisa, could be taken as a direct connotation for his style of leadership - “literally meaning one who smiles or laughs while causing you harm”.

Saying though he became known for the “nine wasted years” and the implications of state capture, he said there are many sides to the kaleidoscope that is Zuma.

“His contribution to the struggle and the quelling of the black-on-black violence in KwaZulu-Natal are unquestionable and commendable.

“He made decisions, but they were often wrong. He was a popular leader. And though we associate him with the so-called nine wasted years, when he became president he rolled out the ARV programme, saved lives, made people productive. Unlike his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. He is a folksy and cunning co-ordinator who went rogue,” says Makgoba.

In the book he gives his personal observations about the years since the inception of democracy and the four presidents he engaged with over that time.

He describes President Cyril Ramaphosa as a “process man, a consensus builder but an avoidant leader”.

“In the past five years, Ramaphosa has created a whopping 110 commissions, councils, funds, initiatives, programmes, summits, task forces and war rooms,” Makgoba says.

“He runs the country through commissions and task teams, you don’t appoint a leader to consult but to make decisions and act. A leader is there to implement,” he says.

He describes him as a president who is not decisive, courageous, convictive, or a leader, but a strong constitutionalist who has described himself as a “process person”.

The chapter on Mbeki is a contentious one as it speaks to his legacy of HIV/Aids denialism.

In this extract, Mbeki is looked at through the lens of a renaissance man, a shaper who made decisions and wanted to implement them.

“He was one of the best intellectual and arrogant leaders we ever had, a transformative leader who also gave us the most devastating denialism of our time,” Makgoba said.

“Mbeki was the de facto president of the republic from 1994, while President Nelson Mandela, the de jure president, was a largely ceremonial guardian of the new democracy,” he writes.

He says in terms of political identity, the country has not defined what it would look like post apartheid.

“We have lost our identity as South Africans. We are the most colonised Africans on the continent. Most things that we do are not of our own — things that we have borrowed — we think we are smart.

“The country is no worse than what we inherited. We inherited something that we didn’t make use of. This leadership has no sense of purpose and direction. We hear of a new dawn and it looks like darkness.

“We are not doing anything authentic, we are just imitating. We haven’t had a conversation on what we want to do with it [democracy].”

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