How did Cyril Ramaphosa make a difference?

Cyril Ramaphosa (1952 – ) Awarded for: His invaluable contribution to the multiparty negotiations and convening the Constitutional Assembly to draft the new Constitution during the transition from apartheid to a democratic South Africa

He returned to politics in December 2012 at the ANC’s 53rd National Conference and served as the deputy president of South Africa under President Jacob Zuma from 2014 to 2018. He was also chairman of the National Planning Commission. At the ANC’s 54th National Conference on 18 December 2017, he was elected president of the ANC. Two months later, the day after Zuma resigned on 14 February 2018, the National Assembly (NA) elected Ramaphosa as president of South Africa. He began his first full term as president in May 2019 following the ANC’s victory in the 2019 general election. While president, Ramaphosa served as chairperson of the African Union from 2020 to 2021 and led South Africa’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ramaphosa’s net worth was estimated at over R6.4 billion ($450 million) as of 2018. He has been criticised for the conduct of his business interests, including his harsh posture as a Lonmin director towards the Marikana miners’ strike in the week ahead of the Marikana massacre.

On 19 December 2022, it was announced that the ANC’s 55th National Conference had elected Ramaphosa to a second term as president of the ANC.

Early life

Ramaphosa was born in Soweto, Johannesburg, on 17 November 1952, to Venda parents. He is the second of the three children to Erdmuth and retired policeman Samuel Ramaphosa.He attended Tshilidzi Primary School and Sekano Ntoane High School in Soweto. In 1971, he matriculated from Mphaphuli High School in Sibasa, Venda where he was elected head of the Student Christian Movement. He subsequently registered to study law at the University of the North (Turfloop) in Limpopo Province in 1972.

While at university, Ramaphosa became involved in student politics and joined the South African Students Organisation (SASO) and the Black People’s Convention (BPC). This resulted in him being detained in solitary confinement for eleven months in 1974 under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act, 1967, for organising pro-Frelimo rallies. In 1976 he was detained again, following the unrest in Soweto, and held for six months at John Vorster Square under the Terrorism Act. After his release, he became a law clerk for a Johannesburg firm of attorneys and continued with his legal studies through correspondence with the University of South Africa (UNISA), where he obtained his Bachelor of Procurationis degree (B. Proc.) in 1981.

Anti-apartheid and labor activism

After completing his legal qualifications and obtaining his degree, Ramaphosa joined the Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA) as an advisor in the legal department. In 1982, CUSA requested that Ramaphosa start a union for mineworkers; this new union was launched in the same year and was named the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Ramaphosa was arrested in Lebowa, on the charge of organising or planning to take part in a meeting in Namakgale which had been banned by the local magistrate.

In August 1982, CUSA resolved to form the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and in December Ramaphosa became its first secretary. Ramaphosa was the conference organiser in the preparations leading to the formation of the Congress of the South African Trade Union (COSATU). He delivered a keynote address at Cosatu’s launch rally in Durban in December 1985. In March 1986, he was part of COSATU’s delegation which met the African National Congress in Lusaka, Zambia.

Ramaphosa was elected as the first general secretary of the union, a position he held until he resigned in June 1991, following his election as secretary-general of the African National Congress (ANC). Under his leadership, union membership grew from 6,000 in 1982 to 300,000 in 1992, giving it control of nearly half of the total black workforce in the South African mining industry. As general secretary, he, James Motlatsi (president of NUM), and Elijah Barayi (vice-president of NUM) also led the mineworkers in one of the biggest strikes ever in South African history.

In December 1988, Ramaphosa and other prominent members of the Soweto community met Soweto’s mayor to discuss the rent boycott crisis.

In 1985, the NUM broke away from CUSA and helped to establish the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). When COSATU joined forces with the United Democratic Front (UDF) political movement against the National Party government of P. W. Botha, Ramaphosa took a leading role in what became known as the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM).

Ramaphosa has claimed that he is a committed socialist.

Rise in the ANC (1990–1996)

After the ANC was unbanned in early 1990, Ramaphosa became increasingly close with the organisation. In January 1990, he accompanied released ANC political prisoners to the ANC headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia; and, later, that year, he served as chairman of the National Reception Committee, which coordinated arrangements for Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, including concomitant celebratory rallies.Ramaphosa was elected Secretary-General of the ANC at the party’s 48th National Conference in Durban in July 1991, and subsequently became head of the ANC’s delegation to the negotiations that ended apartheid. He was also a visiting professor of law at Stanford University in October 1991.

Following the first fully democratic elections in 1994, he became a Member of Parliament (MP) and was elected the chairperson of its Constitutional Assembly on 24 May 1994, a central role in Mandela’s Government of National Unity. He was also re-elected, unopposed, as ANC Secretary-General at the party’s 49th National Conference in December 1994.However, in 1996, he resigned from ANC office and from Parliament and announced his retreat from politics, reportedly because he was disappointed that Thabo Mbeki had been anointed Mandela’s successor.

Business career (1996–2014)

After he resigned from politics, Ramaphosa became a businessman, taking advantage of the conducive environment provided by the new Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policy. Among other positions, he was executive chairman of the Shanduka Group, a company he founded, which invested in mineral resources, energy, real estate, banking, insurance, and telecoms (SEACOM).By 2014, Shanduka was worth more than R20-billion, and the Ramaphosa family’s Tshivhase Trust was its majority shareholder. Ramaphosa was also a chairman of Bidvest, MTN, and from March 2007, Mondi, a leading international paper and packaging group. His other non-executive directorships included Macsteel Holdings, Alexander Forbes, SABMiller, Lonmin, Anglo American, and Standard Bank In 2011, Ramaphosa paid for a 20-year master franchise agreement to run 145 McDonald’s restaurants in South Africa. He also belonged to the Coca-Cola Company International Advisory Board and the Unilever Africa Advisory Council.

Ramaphosa’s various shareholdings made him one of South Africa’s richest men. According to the Sunday Times, his estimated net worth of R2.22 billion made him the 13th richest person in South Africa in 2011, and that figure jumped to R3.1 billion in 2012. Both estimates, moreover, excluded his unlisted investments through Shanduka, including the McDonald’s franchise agreement and a coal-mining partnership with Glencore.

Cattle farming

During a visit to Uganda in 2004, Ramaphosa became interested in the Ankole breed of cattle. Because of inadequate disease control measures in Uganda, the South African government denied him permission to import any of the breed. Instead, Ramaphosa purchased 43 cows from Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and shipped them to Kenya, where they were artificially inseminated; the embryos were then removed and shipped to South Africa, to be transferred to quarantined cows. As of August 2017, Ramaphosa had 100 Ankole breeding cows at his Ntaba Nyoni farm in Mpumalanga.That year, he co-wrote a book about the breed, Cattle of the Ages: Stories, and Portraits of the Ankole Cattle of Southern Africa.

Public service

His resignation from politics notwithstanding, Ramaphosa occasionally accepted positions in the public eye, both abroad and in South Africa. He became the first Vice Chairman of the Commonwealth Business Council, and, in 1998, the Chairman of South Africa’s BEE Commission. In 2000, he was appointed to the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning as an arms inspector, responsible for supervising the decommissioning of Irish Republican Army armaments in Northern Ireland. And, in April 2010, he was appointed by President Jacob Zuma to the National Planning Commission, where he served as Deputy Chairperson to Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel.

In the 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis, which followed the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki in December 2007, Ramaphosa was unanimously chosen by Kofi Annan’s mediation team to be the chief mediator in charge of long-term talks. However, Kibaki’s government protested Ramaphosa’s involvement, saying that he had business links with Kibaki’s opponent Raila Odinga. According to Ramaphosa, Odinga had visited him in 2007, but he did not have any “special interest” that would lead him to favour one side or the other;however, he said that he could not be an effective mediator without “the trust and confidence of all parties” and that he did not wish to become an obstacle to the negotiations. He therefore withdrew from the talks on 4 February.However, he returned to a peacemaking role in 2014, when – in his capacity as Deputy Chairperson of the National Planning Commission – he served as the South African President’s Special Envoy to South Sudan during the South Sudanese civil war.

Ramaphosa also continued to accept nominations to the National Executive Committee of the ANC: at the 50th National Conference in 1997, he received the most votes of any candidate; and at the 51st National Conference in 2002, he received the second-most. Ahead of the 52nd National Conference in 2007, he denied persistent rumours that he intended to join the race to replace Mbeki as ANC president; that year, he ranked 30th on the list of most popular NEC candidates.