Cyril Ramaphosa

Cyril Ramaphosa (born November 17, 1952, Johannesburg, South Africa) South African activist, businessman, and politician widely credited for his role in the 1990s in the negotiations that ended South Africa’s racially discriminatory policy of apartheid and that ushered in a new era of nonracial government. He has been president of South Africa since 2018 and of the African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party, since 2017.

Early years, education, and activism

Ramaphosa was born to Samuel and Erdmuth Ramaphosa during South Africa’s racially discriminatory apartheid era. He spent his early years in Western Native Township in the Transvaal (now in Gauteng) province. In 1962 his family was forced to move to Soweto, a township just outside of Johannesburg. He began attending the University of the North (now the University of Limpopo) in 1972, where he studied law. Religion, being important to Ramaphosa, led to him being heavily involved in the Student Christian Movement at both high school and university. While at the University of the North, he also joined the South African Student Organisation and engaged in activism. Ramaphosa was arrested in 1974 after organizing and attending a rally celebrating the fall of the colonial administration and the victory of Frelimo rebels in neighbouring Mozambique. For 11 months he was held in solitary confinement. After his release in September 1975, he continued to be involved in activism, becoming active in the Black People’s Convention. In the months after the start of the Soweto Uprising (June 1976), Ramaphosa was again arrested and was kept in solitary confinement for six months before being released in February 1977. After several years of part-time studies and part-time work as a law clerk, Ramaphosa earned a B.Proc. degree from the University of South Africa (UNISA) in 1981.

More From Britannica

South Africa: Zuma’s resignation

Involvement with unions, the ANC, and politics

Soon after earning his degree, Ramaphosa was hired as a legal adviser for the Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA). He was asked by CUSA to help establish the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and, upon its creation in 1982, he became general secretary, a position he held until 1991. Ramaphosa honed his organizational and leadership skills in this position as he focused on improving the working conditions and wages of Black miners. While working at the NUM, he helped form the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), a federation of trade unions, in 1985. He also oversaw the 1987 NUM strike which, at the time, was the largest and longest-running strike in the history of South Africa’s mining industry. Although NUM did not receive the wage increase and other concessions they were striking for, the strike itself was viewed as a success for demonstrating the organizational might of the union and for laying the path for future negotiations and gains. The event also enhanced Ramaphosa’s reputation as a negotiator.

As legislated apartheid began to unravel in the early 1990s, the ANC, a Black nationalist organization that had been banned in 1960 by the white minority government, was unbanned in 1990. The following year Ramaphosa was elected to serve as the ANC’s secretary general as well as to sit on the ANC’s influential National Executive Committee (NEC). With his years of negotiating experience from union work, he was tapped to be the ANC’s chief negotiator in multiparty discussions for the country’s transition from apartheid to multiracial democracy.

The country’s first nonracial democratic elections were held in 1994 and saw Black nationalist Nelson Mandela become the country’s first Black president. Though Ramaphosa was well positioned to be chosen as Mandela’s deputy president, that post ultimately went to Thabo Mbeki, with Ramaphosa becoming a member of the National Assembly. From 1994 to 1996 he served as chairman of the Constitutional Assembly, which drafted the country’s new constitution. For his work on the widely acclaimed constitution, Ramaphosa was honoured with a prestigious South African award, the Order of the Baobab in Silver, in 2009. After his work was completed on that task in 1996, he resigned from the National Assembly and from his post as secretary general of the ANC. However, he continued to be a member of the party and kept his spot on the NEC.

Business endeavours

After leaving politics, Ramaphosa focused on his business aspirations. He started out at New African Investments Ltd. (NAIL), where he was deputy executive chairman. In 2001 he founded the Shanduka Group, an investment firm which grew to have holdings in multiple business sectors, such as mining, property, finance, and fast-food franchises. He also served on the boards of many South African businesses. In time, his endeavours made him one of the country’s wealthiest businessmen. In 2004 he established the Shanduka Foundation, which provided education and business opportunities in order to foster social and economic development in the country; it was renamed the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation in 2015.

Return to politics

In December 2012 Ramaphosa was elected deputy president of the ANC at the party’s leadership conference to serve under Jacob Zuma, who was president of the ANC as well as of South Africa. After Zuma was reelected president in May 2014, he appointed Ramaphosa as deputy president of the country. To avoid conflicts of interest, Ramaphosa stepped down from many corporate positions he held and divested from his business interests.

The ANC’s next leadership conference was held in December 2017. Zuma, who was beleaguered by scandal, did not stand for another term as party president. Ramaphosa, campaigning on a platform of fighting corruption and promoting economic growth, was narrowly elected president of the ANC. His ascent to party president put him in position to be chosen as the next president of the country. Strengthened by his victory, Ramaphosa and his supporters in the ANC began to actively maneuver for the scandal-ridden Zuma to step down as president of South Africa—a delicate task, given that Zuma still had much support within the party. Their efforts culminated on February 13, 2018, when the ANC announced that it was recalling Zuma from the presidency. Though Zuma was initially defiant, he did resign the next day. As deputy president, Ramaphosa automatically became the country’s acting president upon Zuma’s resignation; on February 15 he was formally elected to the post by the National Assembly and was sworn in.

Presidency

As president of South Africa, Ramaphosa faced entrenched challenges that could not be quickly resolved, such as fixing the causes of ongoing power shortages and eliminating the corruption rooted in so many sectors and which the electorate had come to associate with the ANC. He and his administration made some positive strides on the latter front, ordering investigations into corruption allegations at two government-controlled businesses (one of which was ESKOM, the troubled electricity utility) as well as establishing a special tribunal that would handle corruption cases in an expedient manner and reclaim public funds that had been stolen.

Ramaphosa faced additional challenges because of a sizable faction within his own party that opposed some of his policies; because of this, he had to accept some policy positions he previously had not agreed with, such as those relating to managing the issue of land reform to address the persistent racial disparity in land ownership in the country. Ramaphosa had long extolled a more moderate approach to redistributing land, but he now committed to the more extreme approach supported by the Zuma faction of the ANC as well as a populist ANC splinter group, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF): expropriating land, without compensation to the owners, so that it could be redistributed to Black South Africans.

South Africa’s next national election was held in May 2019. The ANC won the most votes, though it was by the party’s slimmest margin of victory since taking power. Ramaphosa was elected president in the National Assembly, and he was sworn in for his first full term on May 25. His new cabinet, announced in the following days, was noteworthy for having women appointed to half of the posts, resulting in the first gender-balanced cabinet in South African history.

The next year South Africa, like much of the world, was hit with the COVID-19 pandemic, depressing the already struggling economy. It also stressed the country’s health-care system and highlighted the entrenched inequality lingering from the apartheid era. Ramaphosa declared a state of disaster in March 2020; he would not lift it until April 2022. Initially, his management of the crisis was generally applauded, though he was criticized as the pandemic dragged on and frustrations with the restrictive preventive measures and a faltering economy grew.

“Farmgate” scandal

In June 2022 Ramaphosa was accused of criminal conduct in a complaint filed by Arthur Fraser, a Zuma ally and previous head of the country’s State Security Agency. He alleged that Ramaphosa had covered up a theft in 2020 of at least $4 million in foreign money that had been kept in a couch at Phala Phala, Ramaphosa’s game farm, as well as had kidnapped and bribed the robbery suspects. The allegedly large amount of foreign currency and the manner in which it was stored raised questions regarding the origin of the money and whether it had been properly declared by Ramaphosa.

Ramaphosa denied any wrongdoing in the matter. Regarding the theft, he said that a smaller amount of money had been stolen when he was not present at the farm and that he reported the theft once he was made aware of it. He asserted that the stolen money was from the sale of game and not any nefarious activity. Details provided by Ramaphosa and his staff surrounding the incident were murky, though, and at times appeared contradictory, and the appearance of impropriety grew. Multiple government agencies, including the Office of the Public Protector (national ombudsman) and the South African Reserve Bank, opened investigations into the matter, which had become known as “Farmgate.”

The scandal was a blow to Ramaphosa’s anti-corruption reputation, and it had some calling for his resignation. In September 2022 a Section 89 investigation was opened in the National Assembly to determine whether impeachment proceedings against the president were warranted. The Section 89 Panel Report, submitted to the National Assembly on November 30, found that Ramaphosa might be guilty of having violated the country’s constitution in his actions surrounding the “Farmgate” scandal; he rejected the findings and proclaimed his innocence. The National Assembly met on December 13 to discuss the report’s findings and decide whether impeachment proceedings should be initiated against him. But the ANC, the largest party in the body, had instructed its members to reject the call for an impeachment inquiry, so it was no surprise when the majority of the National Assembly voted against it. Days later Ramaphosa was reelected president of the ANC at the party’s leadership conference.

In March 2023 the preliminary findings of the public protector’s investigation were leaked. They indicated that no evidence of wrongdoing by Ramaphosa had been found. The official investigation report, released on June 30, 2023, confirmed that Ramaphosa had been cleared of wrongdoing by the public protector.