South Africa’s political terrain has always had its fair share of critics — some well-meaning, others just bitter and bored. But it is the latter, masquerading as analysts, that have now become the loudest prophets of doom. Chief among them is Moeletsi Mbeki — the permanent pessimist, the serial slanderer, the man who has not met a Black President he would not crucify to satisfy his personal bitterness.

Let us not forget: Moeletsi was the same man who cartoonishly predicted that President Cyril Ramaphosa would be publicly embarrassed, even devoured, by Donald Trump and the West. South Africa, he said, was a “Chihuahua barking at global superpowers” — small, yapping, and out of its depth.

Fast forward to the present: President Ramaphosa not only emerged unscathed from every high-stakes global engagement, he negotiated with precision, played the long game, and preserved South Africa’s dignity on the world stage. Trump is gone. President Ramaphosa remains — respected and calculated. The real embarrassment is not the President, but the analyst whose apocalyptic visions have evaporated into irrelevance.

Where are those headlines now? Where is the praise for a statesman who ushered in a Government of National Unity (GNU) with strategic brilliance, absorbing even the DA into a shared governance framework — without surrendering principle, power, or policy? Suddenly, the same voices that doubted his parliamentary prowess during GNU debates now glorify DA MPs as if the GNU is a blue victory. What a pathetic attempt to rewrite the script.

These are the same analysts who forget — or deliberately ignore — that President Ramaphosa was part of the original constitutional negotiations with the Broederbond’s finest, negotiating against the hard fists of apartheid power to birth the democratic miracle we now live in. To doubt his capacity to unify competing forces is not only dishonest, it is historically blind.

And what do these failed prophets offer instead? A toxic cocktail of jealousy, political envy, and intellectual laziness disguised as foresight. Moeletsi Mbeki, in particular, has crossed the threshold of relevance. He is no longer a voice of critique — he is a fossilized echo of his former self, choking on the dust of his own irrelevance. 

He once insulted his own brother, President Thabo Mbeki, with such venom you’d think they were Trojan warriors at war over Helen of Troy. For a child of two revolutionary parents, he has become a walking contradiction — a public intellectual who adds no public value, only private grief.

It is high time we called this what it is: political sabotage from within. You do not claim to support your country while rooting for its downfall. You do not elevate others by diminishing your own. This is not analysis — it is disloyalty at its worst.

To glorify coalition partners while vilifying the Field Marshal who deployed them — our President — is like cheering a soccer team while booing the coach who masterminded the win. It’s not only illogical, it’s treasonous in spirit. If President Ramaphosa had failed, they would have sharpened their knives. Now that he has succeeded, they seek to erase his fingerprints from the victory. Sies!

Moeletsi Mbeki has reached his sell-by date. He should take his prophetic failures and go entertain his grandchildren with bedtime tales of all the futures that never came. Just spare us his tired fiction and bitter editorials. South Africa deserves better.

The battle lines are clear. As we head toward local government elections, we must reject these false prophets and rally behind leaders who deliver — not just talk. President Ramaphosa is that leader. He has earned his place, not through noise, but through mastery. And we, the branches, must rise to defend him.

Blood has been drawn. The time for softness is over.

Stan Itshegetseng is a member of the ANC’s Vuyani Mabaxa Branch, Greater Johannesburg Region, in Gauteng. He writes in his personal capacity.