NDP will be Zuma’s ‘marvellous legacy’ – Ramaphosa

Cyril Ramaphosa. Picture: Leon Sadiki/City Press

ANC deputy president Cyril Rampahosa kicked off his second day in the office with a major charm offensive on the KwaZulu-Natal lower South Coast.

Accompanied by party heavyweight and Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba, Rampahosa wooed both business leaders in the region and ordinary ANC members as part of a programme leading up to Saturday’s milestone January 8 statement in Durban.

The rest of the ANC top six have also been deployed around the province to both report back to membership and mobilise support for a massive show of strength on Saturday.

Ramaphosa told supporters at a rally at Umzumbe village near Port Shepstone that ANC president Jacob Zuma would remain the face of the party’s 2014 election campaign, despite speculation to the contrary.

Zuma, Ramaphosa said, would leave a “marvellous’’ legacy through the National Development Plan which he commissioned.

President Nelson Mandela’s leadership had liberated the country, Thabo Mbeki’s had consolidated democracy while Zuma’s role would be to take South Africa to a “higher level.’’

Ramaphosa quoted South Africa’s successful rollout of ARV treatment for HIV-AIDS patients and the increase in life expectancy to 60 as being among the achievements of the Zuma-led government.

The NDP, he said, was ready to be implemented, but needed not just government but a social compact with civil society, labour and the ordinary citizenry for it to succeed.

Earlier in the day Ramaphosa met business leaders from the South Coast, to whom he punted the NDP and his support for and endorsement of the Zuma administration.

Outlining the multi-trillion rand infrastructure rollout which would be part of the NDP, Ramaphosa urged business people to get involved in the projects which would change economic fortunes of ordinary South Africans.

Ramaphosa also called for a more humane approach to workers, saying that “all’’ the actors in the Marikana massacre had “failed’’.

Employers, he said, had no idea under what conditions their employees worked and lived. This kind of “exclusion’’ he said, had contributed to the tragedy.

Tomorrow Ramaphosa continues with ANC meetings throughout the province.