Some signs of life, action, at last from President Cyril Ramaphosa – but don't celebrate just yet

South African can let out a great national sigh of relief now that President Cyril Ramaphosa has finally shown some signs of life – getting up to action and dumping a comrade from his Cabinet and suspending the South Gauteng prosecutions chief who's had a cloud over his head for years.

But there’s really nothing “bold” about CR's action this week. Instead, what we have just witnessed is a whole president of a once-glorious movement and a respected democratic republic backing down in a game of snail-pace chicken with the coalition-partner-cum-opposition-party DA.

The originators of the game of chicken were high-speed daredevils, but this ultra-low-speed game he keeps playing with the DA is boring and costly in terms of time and everything he should be using to turn our economy and country around.

The question is: what took him so long, especially with respect to suspending Advocate Andrew Chauke?

Instead of gaining some pace and doing the straightforward and right thing to do, our volunteer-in-chief is getting more slothful. The ever dillydallying Mr Thuma Mina is getting worse during his second term when he should be quickening his cleaning up and renewal.

The winner in this battle of chicken with Ramaphosa, DA leader John Steenhuisen, had some good advice for him: act “decisively and consistently, not only when under pressure”.

The DA, while happy to have won this battle, is by no means done with the Dr Nobuhle Nkabane scandal. It will continue milking it while also gunning for the remaining skeleton collectors in Ramaphosa’s camp. The DA has tasted blood with the “results” it scored this week.

And there’s another frustrating feature of our daily lives – the DA’s brinkmanship that isn’t at all good for our hearts’ health.

We came close to witnessing our national budgeting process come to “death”. What would have followed that hitherto unseen and unthunk disaster in our democracy is not clear, but fresh elections, a successful presidential no-confidence process and such political Armageddon were bandied about. But, just in time, Ramaphosa finally gave in to the DA’s relentless pressure.

For now, let’s all breathe and let out the stress and hope for some semblance of stability for a while.