Ramaphosa needed that Obama moment

At this time of the year, a lot of people complain about Mandela fatigue.

This I understand is the sheer exhaustion from media saturation with all things Mandela due to his birthday celebrations.

2018 was different and more pronounced because of the marking of the centenary of his birth.

It was also different because the Nelson Mandela Foundation chose a speaker wildly popular across the world – former US president Barack Obama.

Consequently, the occasion was also different because of the extraordinary number of people who attended, around 15 000.

The occasion was also different because the last time Obama spoke here it was during the memorial service after the death of Mandela in 2013.

South Africans who were angry with the government of then president Jacob Zuma saw it as an occasion to publicly rebuke Zuma by booing him while loudly cheering for Obama.

The crowd was criticised for lacking a sense of occasion for using Madiba’s funeral to vent at Zuma, but they made their point.

This time the mood was different – Zuma was gone, we have a new president in charge and South Africa was celebrating instead of mourning Mandela.

There might be anxieties about the economic situation but it was not showing.

Thousands lined up outside the Wanderers Cricket Stadium in plush Illovo, Johannesburg, in a queue that moved at a snail’s pace.

But there was no shoving and pushing as the racially mixed crowd patiently waited for the security checks that held up the queue.

What the lecture did was consolidate Obama’s standing among many black and white South Africans who have always held him in high esteem.

His critics, who see in him as the drone master who bombed places in the Middle East during his presidency, did not of course listen to him because they saw no value in doing so.

This was Obama’s first public address in a while and different constituencies had different expectations of it.

When he finally took the stage after too many unnecessary speeches before the main one, he delivered for many, although some were hoping that he would be quite direct in his criticism of his bumbling successor Donald Trump.

Obama did spend some time taking aim at Trump, albeit indirectly.

When he spoke about the rise of the politics of fear and resentment, it was Trump he had in mind.

“I am not being alarmist. I am simply stating the facts. Look around. Strongman politics are ascendant suddenly, whereby elections and some pretense of democracy are maintained, but those in power seek to undermine every institution or norm that gives democracy meaning.

“In the West you’ve got far-right parties that oftentimes are based not just on platforms of protectionism and close borders, but also on barely hidden racial nationalism,” he said.

With Trump known as the only prominent leader who communicates his policies and thoughts through Twitter, Obama pointed to the danger of social media.

“Social media, once seen as a mechanism to promote knowledge and understanding and solidarity, has proved to be just as effective at promoting hatred and paranoia and propaganda and conspiracy theories.”

Obama also went for leaders who ignored reality and just make up facts as they go along, which is something of a trademark for Trump.

“We actually have to believe in an objective reality. This is another one of these things that I didn’t have to lecture about. You have to believe in facts. Without facts, there is no basis for cooperation… Unfortunately too much of politics today seems to reject the very concept of objective truth. People just make stuff up. They just make stuff up.

Politicians have always lied, but it used to be if you caught them lying, they’d be like ‘oh man’. Now they just keep on lying,” Obama said.

The Washington Post newspaper in the US has been keeping count and says Trump has made over 3000 false or misleading claims since he took office.

It also says Trump has a tendency to repeat over and over the same false or misleading statements.

Obama also spent time bewailing the endemic inequality in the world and how those who were rich just wanted more and were oblivious to the suffering of the others.

“There’s only so much you can eat. There’s only so big a house you can have. There’s only so many nice trips you can make. I mean it’s enough. You don’t have to take a vow of poverty just to say: ‘Let me help out and a let a few of the other folks, let me look at that child out there who doesn’t have enough to eat or needs some school fees, let me help him out. I’ll pay a little more in taxes. Its okay. I can afford it’.”

He dared mention the concept of an inclusive capitalism, a subject likely to keep political scientists busy for a while as capitalism has always been regarded as inherently encouraging greed and accumulation.

Obama also appears to have prepared his speech to focus on good governance generally over the world as many of his themes kept returning to that.

This is where he mostly invoked the name of Mandela and what the struggle stalwart would have done in each situation.

“We have to actively resist the notion that basic human rights like freedom to dissent or the right of women to fully participate in society or the right of minorities to equal treatment or the right of people not to be beaten and jailed because of their sexual orientation – we have to be careful not to say that somehow that doesn’t apply to us, that those are Western ideas rather than universal imperatives.”

He warned against leaders who surround themselves with people who only tell them what they want to hear.

“Democracy demands that we are able also to get inside the reality of people who are different than us, so we understand their point of view. Maybe we can change their minds, maybe they can change ours,” Obama said.

It might not necessarily have been his imperative, but one of the biggest gifts Obama gave on the day was to Ramaphosa: it was the gift of validation.

Having seen how Zuma was so intensely disliked the last time, the former US president was totally impressed by the wild cheers and very warm reception Ramaphosa received on the day.

As he started his speech, Obama remarked that “you can see (President Ramaphosa) is inspiring new hope in this great country”.

After the pressure he has been under due to the VAT increase and fuel price increase, as well as criticism that he was weak, Ramaphosa needed that Obama moment.

By the time he finished after 5pm in the now very chilling evening, the crowd was still intact, waiting for his last word.

He had defeated both the cold and the Mandela fatigue.