Cyril Ramaphosa’s election as President of the ANC at NASREC in December 2017 was the second great turning point in the history of the new South Africa.  The first had come at the ANC’s elective conference at Polokwane in 2007, when Jacob Zuma had defeated an astonished Thabo Mbeki in the election for the ANC’s presidency.

Zuma’s victory had its roots in a decision that was taken at COSATU’s 9th Congress in 2006 when the organisation decided to launch a battle for the ‘heart and soul’ of the ANC.  It resolved, among other things, that “the working class must re-direct the NDR towards socialism and jealously guard it against opportunistic tendencies that are attempting to wrest it from achieving its logical conclusion, which is socialism”.