“KEY levers of public power” are still in the hands of people beholden to big business, South Africa’s communists warned today.

Following a plenary meeting, the South African Communist Party’s central committee pointed out that Cyril Ramaphosa’s election to the African National Congress presidency had been by the “slimmest of margins,” showing the continued role of “personalities historically implicated in ‘state capture’ networks.”

It called on Mr Ramaphosa, now president of South Africa as well as the ruling ANC, to “press ahead unsparingly” with the drive to sweep out the corruption associated with ousted president Jacob Zuma and his shady big-business backers.