Poetic Licence

While the world marked their 67 minutes in honour of Mandela Day, celebrating a man imprisoned for fighting injustice, South Africa was still reeling from a chilling prophecy: that one of his successors may one day be imprisoned not for principle, but for betraying that very legacy. Political analyst Prince Mashele, in a moment of devastating clarity, declared that Cyril Ramaphosa “will die in jail if he reaches 80.” This isn’t hyperbole. It is an allegation that cuts to the heart of what the presidency has become: not a house of accountability, but a fortress of concealment. 

Mashele doesn’t mince his words. He calls Ramaphosa “the criminal-in-chief” of a broader criminal syndicate masquerading as a government. In his telling, this isn’t mere incompetence, it’s calculated rot, shielded by a smiling man in a tailored suit. The accusations are sweeping: from Phala Phala’s undeclared dollars stuffed in furniture, to the protection of compromised ministers like Senzo Mchunu. And all of it, he says, done with intent, not ignorance. If Mashele is right, then Mandela’s movement has been hollowed from the inside. 

Mandela Day asks us to give 67 minutes to honour a life spent in sacrifice. But what does that mean when the party he once led stands accused of sacrificing the people instead? Every blanket donated, every soup kitchen served, every school painted this week is soaked in irony if those who sit in power continue to govern without conscience. Mashele’s words may have been harsh, but perhaps they struck a nerve precisely because they ring too close to the truth. 

We are not just dealing with a fallible leader, we are staring into the void of institutional collapse. Mashele claims Ramaphosa knew about the looting, protected the looters, and engineered silence. And if that's true, then what we face is not a leadership crisis, it is state capture in a velvet glove. The criminality he describes is not on the fringes; it is organised, it is strategic, and it is allegedly being managed from the highest office in the land. 

The real indictment, though, may not rest solely with the president. It rests with us, the people who look away, who wait for the next election, who mutter in queues but never mobilise in streets. If Mandela Day is to mean anything beyond a corporate feel-good exercise, then it must awaken the part of us that refuses to be governed by ghosts. We are complicit when we romanticise the struggle but tolerate the betrayal. The question is no longer whether Ramaphosa will die in jail, it is whether the soul of the nation can survive under his watch. 

Mandela once said that our freedom would be meaningless without dignity. Today, dignity is suffocating under the weight of impunity. If Mashele’s prediction feels like a stretch, it’s only because we’ve allowed the bar to drop so low. Whether or not Ramaphosa dies in jail is beside the point. What’s dying now is trust, and that, too, might take generations to rebuild. 

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