President Ramaphosa’s comments to his African National Congress (ANC) colleagues last week that the country would be better governed by the DA than by them marks the first page of the final chapter of his reign. Calls for his head will grow and even if he survives these, an increasingly lame-duck status seems assured.

His tenure has been a catastrophe for the ANC. Whereas the eras of Mr Mandela and Mr Mbeki saw the country create around 500 000 net new jobs per annum, Mr Ramaphosa’s reign has not even seen 100 000. On jobs, Jacob Zuma was twice as successful.

Inheriting a position where the ANC still commanded the votes of nearly 6 in 10 South Africans, he crashed that number to 4 in 10, and his tenure, when it finally ends, may see the number at nearer to 3 in 10.

It need not have been that way for him or the ANC. Mr Ramaphosa, however, managed to evade, ignore, or cast aside almost every strategy or opportunity that might have saved the ANC. He rejected advice to stage a handful of prominent arrests and prosecutions early in his term to assuage public anger at corruption and send a message to his colleagues that getting in the way of reform, let alone getting caught committing new acts of corruption, was a ticket to prison (it was never feasible, given the extent of the rot, to stage a complete clean-out of the stables). Instead of thereby isolating malevolent entities in his party, he sought to appease them and, incredibly, unite the ANC with them on board. He rejected the advice to refit the coal fleet, which would have allowed his administration the surplus power to raise the economic growth and job creation rates. Even the steel industry might have been saved. Instead, he doubled down on ruinous green ideologies that even the Europeans have grown wary about. He similarly obstructed a Russian nuclear build plan that, given South Africa’s energy position, his government should have taken a good look at. He dallied with the expropriation trap set for him by his predecessor, driving investment confidence into the ground. Instead of taking decisions, he appointed committees, as if, after more than four decades in trade unions, politics, business, and government, he did not know what made an economy grow. Most recently, he has evaded every opportunity to secure a vast trade and investment pact with the Americans that might have driven South Africa’s parlous investment rate to a level sufficient to hike the growth rate to 3% in the short to medium term (see our lead report this morning on the prospects for a limited trade deal).

At this newspaper we are quite confident in telling you that with sensible energy policies, no expropriation risk, sound empowerment policies, and a sound ‘South Africa first’ foreign policy, the economy would be growing at a rate of near 3% today, and perhaps at 4% or 5%, and that as a consequence the ANC would hold a comfortable national majority in Parliament.

Given the ease with which this might have been done, it is even more astonishing that the ANC has kept him on board as long as it has, or that in elite society he continues to be championed as a reformer and saviour. In the experience of many South Africans, and more especially those who care about the ANC, he has delivered humiliation.

This is something South Africa’s wealthy elites seem quite unable to understand.

The manner in which he championed the unity government pact as a great success was galling to many of his ANC colleagues, who recognised a deep humiliation at their (quite unnecessary) defeat. His token efforts at demonstrating control of the unity government, such as the firing of a Democratic Alliance (DA) deputy minister, deepened the humiliation. A party that had stood up to the might of the apartheid state, and once turned the economy and society around, reduced, in an effort to seem powerful, to the theatrical dismissal of a good young South African, who had done nothing wrong, and was trying to make the country better for all its people.

But relative to what they had already endured, his white-flag surrender to the DA governance record was read as off the charts. More so because, after eight years of failing to turn the economy and the ANC’s governance record around, what he said was so plainly true.

What support remains for him in the ANC and in elite society arises now from concern at who his successor will be. But that situation has only arisen as, in their eagerness to have him in office and to keep him there (in order to keep the alternatives out), ANC elders and elite society held back from pressing him to drive the reforms needed to turn the economy and his party’s governance record around. Instead, as he indulged malevolent colleagues and ruinous economic ideas, he was himself indulged by the very people who had the power and influence to set his administration and the country on a constructive course.

Even today they hold back, and it is astonishing to us that the ANC old guard, people who once drove the economic growth rate to over 5% whilst cutting debt and deficit levels in half, creating millions of jobs and the most expansive welfare system of any emerging market, amidst great service delivery successes, and who strode the global diplomatic stage as colossi, have not yet gathered before the press to say that they are forming a new ANC party to take back the old one. Had they done so before the 2024 election, they would have secured votes far in excess of what MK did and would, as a consequence, have formed the unity government coalition with Mr Ramaphosa’s ANC, allowing the old guard to steady the ship, assume the management, and re-unify ahead of securing a 2029 ANC majority.

In the vacuum, it was left to South Africa’s people to correct course, which they have started to do at the ballot box and which they will continue doing in the local government elections set for 18 months or so from now. South Africa became a democracy exactly to ensure that if a point like this was ever reached, ordinary people would have the ability to try and set things right. We can be very thankful for that, and more so for the fact that those ordinary folk possess the pragmatism, moderation, and common sense to do it.