President Cyril Ramaphosa On Fixing South Africa

On April 15, TIME met with President Cyril Ramaphosa at his official residence, three weeks before the May 8 election.

- Aryn Baker

A longtime antiapartheid activist and high-ranking official of the ANC, the 66-year-old became Deputy President in 2014 and South Africa’s fifth President in February 2018 after Jacob Zuma resigned amid allegations of corruption and “state capture”—when private companies dictate government policy. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

TIME: You worked closely with Nelson Mandela when South Africa had its first democratic elections in 1994. Twenty-five years on, what are you doing as President to build on his vision?

Ramaphosa: Nelson Mandela laid the foundation for South Africa to be what it is today. Before he became President, months after his release from prison [in 1990], Nelson Mandela took his time to go through the country, just to see how our people were living. He came back and he said our people were living under great hardships, and he was determined to make a great effort at changing the horror that he had seen. He introduced what you could call a quasi social-welfare system that has reduced the harsh impact of poverty on our people. Much of what [the ANC] is doing is carrying on Mandela’s legacy. South Africa must emerge out of this widespread poverty.

The ANC has had 25 years to reduce poverty, yet last year the World Bank declared that South Africa is the most unequal society in the world. What is to blame for that?

That inequality has its roots in our past. For instance, on education, the apartheid regime made sure that it spent almost five to six times more on a white child than it did on a black child. Economically, black people were prevented from owning businesses in the so-called white areas. They were prevented from getting into professions.