VENTURES AFRICA ? The rand firmed against a basket of currencies on Tuesday to a more than two-month high after it was announced that Jacob Zuma had been re-elected president of the ruling party ANC.
Analysts said the rand?s performance was not particularly on the back of Zuma?s re-election but on the election of businessman Cyril Ramaphosa as deputy president of the ruling party.
Investors and markets reckon Ramaphosa?s election is good in that it will be building shattered relations between labour, business and government.
?As much as he has a remarkable business insight, he also understands labour issues a lot,? one Johannesburg-based analyst told Ventures Online, adding he has made many investors happy.
Once a leading trade unionist, Ramaphosa became the symbol of black capitalism in South Africa after the ANC came to power at the end of white minority rule in 1994.
But business was never his passion. His first love was politics and he harboured ambitions to become the deputy of Nelson Mandela, South Africa?s first black president.
When Mandela overlooked him, he was said to have been so upset that he refused to attend Mandela?s inauguration as president. He also declined to take a post in government.
Instead, Ramaphosa ? a qualified lawyer ? became an MP and chairman of the constitutional assembly, playing the lead role in drafting South Africa?s post-apartheid constitution, one of the most liberal in the world.
On Tuesday, the rand firmed to 8.5226 after the announcement. By 1557 GMT it hit a session best of 8.5125 as local equities closed at a new record high. Hopes for a resolution to the U.S. fiscal cliff crisis also boosted markets.
Analysts added the choice of millionaire businessman and former mining union leader Ramaphosa as deputy president would make the ANC more business friendly. It was unlikely, however, that there would be changes made to South Africa?s rigid labour laws.
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Mzwandile Jacks Mzwandile Jacks has been a financial journalist for more than 20 years. He has worked full time for the Sowetan, The Lowvelder, Mpumalanga News, Business Day, Primedia Publishing, Finance Week, This Day, Financial Mail and Business Report. His articles have also been published in The New Age, City Press, Fin 24 and many other niche magazines in the stable of Capemedia and Highbury Safika Media, both independent magazine publishers. He has covered Africa extensively while working for the above-mentioned publications. He studied journalism at the Peninsula Technikon in the Western Cape and Politics and English at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). He cites South Africa?s pioneering journalists like Aggrey Klaaste, Joe Thloloe, Mathatha Tsedu, Monk Nkomo and Len Maseko as his mentors. He was voted the best black financial journalist at Finance Week in 2002. Rikus Delport, the editor of Finance Week at the time, described him as ?a top notch journalist of that time.?
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