Africa’s Democratic Moment?July/August 2019 135
It is possible that Lourenço is merely a canny politician building a
new patronage structure beholden to him. His anticorruption inves-
tigations have targeted dos Santos’ family and key allies while spar-
ing other power brokers. But he seems to grasp that reform is the
best way for his country to end its decades o underperformance, and
Angolans appear to agree. IÊ he succeeds, then Angola—a mineral-
and oil-rich country o 30 million people with an 87,000-strong mil-
itary—could realize its potential as a regional powerhouse.
Ramaphosa faces greater structural challenges as he seeks to move
South Africa away from the corrupt legacy oÊ his predecessor, Jacob
Zuma. Zuma allowed cronies to hijack
ministries and state-owned companies
to line their pockets, authorized a dis-
astrous military deployment to the
Central African Republic, and enter-
tained a shady deal with Russia for a
nuclear power plant. For Africa’s most advanced economy, the ane-
mic growth, weakening currency, and periodic rolling power outages
had become a national embarrassment, and in February 2018, Zuma’s
party, the storied African National Congress, forced him to resign,
replacing him with Ramaphosa. Ramaphosa has pledged to attract
$100 billion in new investments over the next Ãve years and reform
the country’s decrepit state-owned corporations. Equally important,
he has established a commission to investigate corruption under his
predecessor, which has already unearthed considerable abuses by for-
mer oceholders.
In May 2019, Ramaphosa won a fresh electoral mandate. To do so,
however, he had to appease left-leaning constituents, signaling sup-
port for land expropriation without compensation, a step that threat-
ens to scare o foreign investors. Moreover, his party remains riddled
with corruption and ideological divisions, which will constrain full-
throated reform. Yet Ramaphosa still represents South Africa’s best
hope for revitalization, and there is so much low-hanging fruit that
even partial reforms could prove game changing. South Africa began
its two-year term as a nonpermanent member o the ¤ Security
Council in 2019 and is set to take over the chairmanship o the Afri-
can Union in 2020. Ramaphosa now has an opportunity to reverse
Zuma’s ignoble record o supporting autocrats and stiÁing human
rights campaigns, and he has made some improvements on this front.
Sometimes new leaders
can untether themselves
from their patrons.