Political analyst Ralph Mathekga on Tuesday argued that President Cyril Ramaphosa can help the African National Congress (ANC) but only if the party allows him.

Speaking during a State of the Nation business breakfast in Johannesburg, Mathekga noted that South Africans look at the ANC’s experiences by looking at individuals.

“Whatever Ramaphosa is able to do within the society will have an effect within the ANC and that will limit how far he moves within the society,” Mathekga warned.

He added that this reform would not have symmetrical benefits, explaining that the more gains Ramaphosa makes in correcting things in society, the more costly it becomes within the ANC.

Mathekga noted that Ramaphosa is trying to bring the ANC back from the “back door”, through government institutions.

“Actually you can say he is trying to transform the ANC from above . . . going to government and saying this and that is not allowed. But in most cases the people that are going to be caught by those regulations and laws you put in government are the people who should have been sanctioned by just tapping them on the shoulder in your own party and saying don’t go out and do this and that,” he said.

Mathekga warned that if the President pushed to eliminate corruption in government it would result in crisis within the ANC. He stressed that if Ramaphosa succeeded in reforming government, he wouldn’t succeed within the ANC, as these two spheres were becoming mutually exclusive.

Mathekga believed that South Africa was experiencing a political fragmentation, noting that “the ANC is not holding”.

He argued that South Africans were already getting accustomed to declining authority.

“In the rural areas there is a lot of shift to traditional leadership as a new source of legitimate authority, despite controversy with the institution and its evolution,” he pointed out.

Mathekga was joined by Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse's Wayne Duvenage and StreamIn’s Michael Sham, who was of the belief there was no redemption for the ANC, citing the opposition to Ramaphosa’s faction within the ruling party, which he said was damaging to the country.