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Some people are furiously totting up the parliamentary arithmetic needed to remove President Cyril Ramaphosa from office through impeachment. Others are studiously calculating how long his legal “Stalingrad” strategy of appeals and delays may buy him before any final reckoning arrives. They look at the numbers, the procedures, the timelines, and conclude that he may yet survive. They are missing the point entirely and there are three reasons why.

The first is that Ramaphosa mattered to the ANC far more as an idea than as a man occupying an office. The value he brought to the party was the belief that he represented reform. He was supposed to be the figure who would clean up corruption, restore credibility to the state, and steady a governing party that had drifted into scandal and decay. Because people believed in that idea, he had political value.

That idea is now dead.

Confidence in reform has collapsed to rock-bottom levels. Polling now shows that fewer than half of ANC voters believe their lives will improve if they vote for the party again. Roughly as many South Africans believe the Democratic Alliance has the policies to fix the country as believe the ANC does. And on corruption, Ramaphosa now finds himself at the centre of the most sensational corruption scandal in modern South African politics. The man who promised to rid the ANC and the state of corruption has instead become the most prominent accused embodying it.

The second problem is economic.

There is now a sense within the investment community that a politically besieged Ramaphosa can even less credibly drive any meaningful reform programme – relative to his already failed efforts to date. There is now an odour of corruption around the presidency that will inevitably see many business leaders and investors begin quietly keeping their distance.

That matters because Ramaphosa’s remaining political utility to the ANC rested heavily on the hope that he could improve the investment climate, unlock growth, and ultimately raise living standards for ANC voters. Now there is no prospect of him driving reforms that materially improve the lives of the party’s support base. And without that, the ANC cannot reverse its vote losses.

The third issue is public opinion.

A majority of South Africans want him removed. Polling shows that just over half the country would support a motion of no confidence against him. Among opposition party voters, support rises to roughly two thirds. Even within ANC voters themselves, around a third already supported such a move before the latest revelations emerged.

And consider that the ANC data is drawn from the remaining roughly 40% of South Africans who still vote ANC. Those are the loyalists most inclined to stay with the party, and many of them largely so because they still believed in Ramaphosa himself.

Which is precisely why the parliamentary maths increasingly misses the point.

Ramaphosa’s legal tactics may delay accountability for a time. He may even survive an impeachment vote (although that is far from certain and on a motion of no confidence vote, not certain at all). But those arguments misunderstand what made Ramaphosa politically valuable.

It was never merely the man that mattered. It was the idea of Ramaphosa. But all that remains now is the man himself. For the ANC, that’s not just a dead-end asset but one that may harm the party further the more it tries to protect him.