"Dream deferred" - Thabo Mbeki and Cyril Ramaphosa in the early 1990s

Title: Thabo Mbeki - A dream deffered
Author: Mark Gevisser
pg. 605

Cyril Ramaphosa was a decade younger than Mbeki, Hani and Zuma. Of these three, the one he most closely resembled was undoubtedly Mbeki. Both were blessed with a formidable intellect and a preternatural strategic nous; both, too were adored by the media and respected by the establishment - Mbeki by the white politicians and businessmen with whom he was tasked to interact; Ramaphosa by the mining bosses he had met across a decades' worth of bargaining tables. Both masked ruthlessness with charm. But whereas Mbeki shied away from conflict, Ramaphosa - never losing this charm or even raising his voice - seemed to relish putting the knife in. He was not much taller than Mbeki, but significantly stouter, and something about his bigness of personality - his large, easy laguh and backslapping affability - made him fill whatever space he entered. You would be aware of Mbeki in the corner of a room and would be drawn to him for an intense one-on-one encounter; Ramaphosa, however, would be the first person you would see upon entering, usually surrounded by a shimmer of admirers, easy to great but hard to pin down. Ramaphosa came across as voracious and welcoming. Mbeki as ascetic and skeptical. And whereas you often felt you had to prove your work with Mbeki, Ramaphosa instantly made you feel like you were the most important person in the room. In their different ways, though, neither man encouraged intimacy; both were notoriously inscrutable. In their different ways, too, both were focussed and ambitious.