Ever since the death of Nelson Mandela, it’s fair to call Cyril Ramaphosa one of the few surviving “founding fathers” of post-apartheid South Africa. He helped write the country’s new constitution, which would supposedly usher in a new era of prosperity and equality. He also oversaw the transition to the new government. And as South Africa descended into lawlessness and squalor over the ensuing 30 years, Ramaphosa gradually accumulated more wealth and power, until he finally became the country’s president in 2018. He’s currently worth something like half a billion dollars, even as the vast majority of South Africa’s residents now live in extreme poverty.
What this means is that Ramaphosa is the personification of South Africa’s post-colonial experiment. When he drafted that new constitution, he presumably did not foresee that, by 2025, the country would have the single highest unemployment rate of any country in the world, at 40%. He certainly didn’t tell anyone that he eventually planned to sign new laws that would disenfranchise and rob white farmers, or that white people would be systematically slaughtered in their homes. But all of that has happened. And yet, for all this time, no one — and certainly no world leader — has held this deranged despot accountable for any of that. Instead, it’s been something of a tradition in Washington to pretend South Africa is somehow a “great ally” to the United States, and to treat Ramaphosa as royalty, as Joe Biden did a few years ago.
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