Mbeki Fires At Ramaphosa — 8 Years In Power And Nothing Positive To Show, Says Former President

Former President Thabo Mbeki did not mince words when he stepped before a gathering this week, delivering a withering verdict on Cyril Ramaphosa’s eight-year tenure at the helm of South Africa’s governing party and the country itself. The 82-year-old statesman looked squarely at the audience and asked a question that cut through the room like cold steel: what, in all this time, has actually improved?

Mbeki reportedly posed the challenge in blunt terms, stating that Ramaphosa assumed leadership of the African National Congress in December 2017 and ascended to the Union Buildings presidency in February 2018. Now, with 2026 firmly underway, the former head of state allegedly declared that nothing of a positive nature had emerged from that entire stretch of governance — a sweeping condemnation from a man who once occupied the very same office.

No formal ANC spokesperson had issued a rebuttal by the time this article went to press, though party insiders told reporters that leadership was monitoring the remarks closely. Presidential spokespersons at the Presidency directed queries to official communications channels, declining to engage substantively with what they described as a personal characterisation rather than a structured critique.

The two men share a complicated, deeply fraught history. Mbeki was removed from the presidency in September 2008 following an internal ANC recall vote, a process his supporters long attributed to Ramaphosa-aligned factions within the movement. That wound never fully healed, and analysts note that Mbeki’s occasional public interventions carry a sharper edge whenever Ramaphosa’s record surfaces as the subject.

What made this particular broadside land harder than most was its simplicity — no academic language, no diplomatic cushioning. An elderly man, grey at the temples, reduced eight years of executive authority to a single devastating syllable: nothing.

Unanswered still is whether Mbeki’s intervention signals a coordinated effort among ANC veterans to force a leadership reckoning ahead of internal party reviews, or whether it represents one sharp voice speaking alone into an increasingly frustrated electorate. South Africans watching their electricity bills climb, their municipal services deteriorate, and their unemployment figures refuse to budge will decide for themselves whether the old president got it right.

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