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…
