Cyril Ramaphosa

Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa is the fifth and current President of South Africa. On February 15, 2018, he took office after his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, resigned and the National Assembly voted in his favor. At the ANC National Conference in December 2017 in Nasrec, south of Johannesburg, he was elected President of the African National Congress (ANC) and Chairman of the National Planning Commission. He is known as a skilled strategist and negotiator. He had been in charge of negotiations for the ANC during South Africa’s move to democracy. He also started the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which is the largest and most powerful trade union in South Africa. He was a big part of ending apartheid without violence. Ramaphosa is also a very successful businessman. His estimated net worth is over $675 million, and he used to own a lot of shares in companies like McDonald’s South Africa and lead the board of directors at MTN Group. Even though he has never been charged with a crime, he has been involved in some very serious scandals, such as the MTN Irancell scandal and the Marikana Massacre.

Early years and childhood

On November 17, 1952, Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa was born in Soweto, Johannesburg. He is the son of Erdmuth and Samuel Ramaphosa. His father was a former police officer, and his mother worked at home. Douglas is Ramaphosa’s brother. He grew up in Soweto, which was a poor township. 
He went to Tshilidzi Primary School and Sekano Ntoane High School for school. In 1971, he graduated from Sibasa, Venda’s Mphaphuli High School. The following year, in 1972, he went to the University of the North (Turfloop) to study law. 
Ramaphosa joined politics while he was still in college. He joined the South African Students’ Organization (SASO) and the Black People’s Convention (BPC). He was put in solitary confinement for 11 months in 1974 because he helped organize pro-Frelimo rallies. This was because of Section 6 of the Terrorism Act. After a disturbance in his hometown in 1976, the police caught him a second time under the Terrorism Act. He remained in prison for the following six months. 
After he got out of prison, he started working as a law clerk for a Johannesburg law firm. At the same time, he studied law through correspondence with the University of South Africa (UNISA). In 1981, he got his B. Proc.

A career in politics

Cyril Ramaphosa joined the Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA) as an advisor in the legal department as soon as he got out of law school. Seniors told him to start the National Union of Mineworkers in 1982, so he did (NUM). * As the first secretary of the new group, he set up the conferences that led to the creation of the Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU). At the COSATU launch rally in Durban in December 1985, he was the main speaker. 
In the end, the union chose him to be its general secretary, a job he held until June 1991. Under his direction, the union went from having 6,000 members in 1982 to 300,000 members in 1992. 
By 1990, he had become one of the most important people in the South African movement against apartheid. He went with the ANC political prisoners to Lusaka, Zambia, with them after they were let out of jail. He was put in charge of the National Reception Committee, which was set up to plan Nelson Mandela’s release and the rallies to welcome him home. He was also part of the international group that helped Mandela feel welcome. 
After winning an election at a conference in Durban in July 1991, he became the new General Secretary of the ANC. Ramaphosa led a small group of ANC members in talks with the National Party government to end apartheid. 
In 1994, South Africa had its first fully democratic election, and Ramaphosa was one of the people who won that election. In the same year, Nelson Mandela became the President of South Africa. 
Later, Ramaphosa led the Constitutional Assembly of the Parliament and was a key part of the government of national unity. 
Even though Ramaphosa has never been a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), he has always said that he is a socialist. After Nelson Mandela turned down a second term, Cyril Ramaphosa ran for president of South Africa but lost to Thabo Mbeki. After losing the election, Ramaphosa quit all of his political jobs and went to work as a director for New Africa Investments Limited in the private sector. 
After a lot of rumors, he went back into national politics in December 2012 to run for vice president. He was chosen as the Deputy President of the ANC on December 18 with 3,018 votes. On May 25, 2014, he became the Vice President of South Africa. He was chosen by President Jacob Zuma, who was in office at the time and sworn in by Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng. 
By section 91(4) of the Constitution, the President soon made him the Leader of Government Business in the National Assembly and the Chairman of the National Planning Commission.

On September 18, 2017, Ramaphosa won a close race against Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the ex-wife of President Zuma, to become the President of the ANC. Zuma stepped down as President of South Africa on February 15, 2018, and Ramaphosa took over as the fifth and current leader of the country.

Work in business

Cyril Ramaphosa is one of South Africa’s most successful businesspeople and he is worth $675 million. He has put money into the energy, real estate, banking, insurance, and telecommunications industries (SEACOM). 

In 2001, he set up an investment holding company called Shanduka Group. He was also the chairman of The Bidvest Group Limited and MTN and a non-executive director of Macsteel Holdings, Alexander Forbes, Standard Bank, and others. In 2011, he signed a 20-year deal to run 145 McDonald’s restaurants in South Africa as a master franchisee. 
After saying that he would run for president in the 2012 general election, Ramaphosa quit all the jobs he had in the private sector.

Other Projects

Ramaphosa owns the Ntaba Nyoni farm in Mpumalanga, which had about 100 Ankole breeding cows as of August 2017. He wrote the book “Cattle of the Ages: Stories and Portraits of the Ankole Cattle of Southern Africa” with another person in 2017. 
In 1985, he wrote “Organising the Mines,” and in 2002, he wrote “Constitutional Law: Analysis and Cases.” Ziyad Motala helped write the second one.

Problems and scandals

During his time as head of the MTN Group, a former employee named Chris Kilowan said that the company had paid bribes to Iranian government officials. The media called this event the MTN Irancell scandal. 
This scandal is being looked into by a group led by Lord Hoffmann, a retired British judge. The commission said that MTN was “not guilty” of any of the charges and that Kilowan was making up stories and believing in conspiracies. 
On August 16, 2012, police opened fire on a group of striking Lonmin workers who had gathered on a “koppie” near the Nkaneng shack settlement in Marikana. In the shooting, thirty-four miners died and seventy-eight more were hurt. Later, it was found that most of the people who died had been shot in the back, far from the police line. The media called it the “Marikana Massacre,” and it was the most deadly act of institutional violence since the end of apartheid. It made the whole country angry.

Later, it came out that Ramaphosa was a shareholder in Lonmin and that the company’s management had asked him to organize “concurrent action” against “criminal” protesters. Because of this, a lot of people blamed him for the massacre. But in the end, it was decided that since the deaths had already happened, his actions were not the reason there were more police on the scene.

Awards & Achievements

In October 1987, Cyril Ramaphosa was given the Olof Palme prize in Stockholm. 
He was named an Honorary Actuary by the Actuarial Society of South Africa for his great work in training actuaries from South African communities that have been historically poor. 

In October 1991, he became a visiting professor of law at Stanford University in the United States.

Personal Life

Cyril Ramaphosa has had two marriages. Nomazizi Mtshotshisa, who ran a business, was his first wife. In 2008, they got a divorce. He later married Dr. Tshepo Motsepe, who is the sister of Patrice Motsepe, who made a lot of money from mining. Together, they have four kids. In 2017, he was accused of having affairs outside of his marriage, but he strongly denied them and said they were made up for political reasons. 
In 2004, he set up the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation. The organization’s goal is to help build a society that is strong and includes everyone.

Trivia

Ramaphosa was put in charge of the Commonwealth Business Council as its first vice chairman.