President Cyril Ramaphosa delivering his State of the Nation Address in the Cape Town City Hall on February 6, 2025. Whilst the President noted the need to address competency levels in municipalities, he did not highlight government’s poor responsiveness, lack of transparency and poor consequence management found across our country, says the writer. Picture: GCIS
Dr Michael Sutcliffe and Ms Sue Bannister
POSSIBLY the most complex of all the speeches any President gives is the annual State of Nation Addresses (SONA).
This is not easy in a society like ours in which inequality, unemployment and poverty rank amongst the highest in the world.
SONAs are made even more difficult given that globally, working with the world is becoming increasingly more complex, requiring the mediation of forces promoting competition, cooperation and conflict, with climate variability disrupting the lives of people every day.
This stark reality was brought home to us as the President mourned the loss of our soldiers, correcting the impression that they died in advancing war, rather than the reality where they were trying to bring peace.
Our government is also thankfully standing firm against the Israeli genocide, signalling to the world that we do not sell our principles to those who believe in ethnic cleansing.
President Ramaphosa’s SONA this year was a positive change from some of the recent years where SONAs often appeared as cut-and-paste executive summaries of what Ministers were to present in subsequent weeks.
We were shown that the journey of the GNU is about how we realise those goals without jeopardising the foundations of critical constitutional issues. Ministers need to focus more on developing and implementing plans urgently rather than focussing on only concepts and names.
In education, the BELA Act is going ahead, while the Health Minister must start laying the factual basis upon which the NHI will be based, including an implementation plan. Importantly, in both of these areas the GNU partners recognise we must ensure access and uniformity in standards of education and health for all.
In a positive departure from the norm, the substantive part of the speech focused on local delivery and the role of municipalities. Whilst the President noted the need to address competency levels in municipalities, he did not highlight government’s poor responsiveness, lack of transparency and poor consequence management found across our country.
This is unfortunate because every day the media raise critical issues and allegations of maladministration and corruption involving senior administrators which are largely ignored by governmental leaders, without any explanation or transparent investigations being conducted.
Also, we have yet to see a public record of whether or not municipalities are obeying the law and reporting financial misconduct to the National Treasury, and once reported, how these reports are addressed by the National Treasury.
It is hoped that COGTA’s updating of the White Paper focuses primarily on reducing significantly the hundreds of rules and regulations which have turned our governments into compliance centres rather than development drivers.
Every day in many of our cities we are losing more clean water than we are consuming. Whilst the mention of additions to our water resources in the form of additional dams is welcome, attention on water and energy needs to be on national initiatives to fix water leaks, sanitation blockages and electricity outages. Communities are crying out for real leadership on these matters, working with them to stamp out corrupt procurement processes and mismanagement by administrators.
Many glimpses were provided on how the GNU will address inclusive growth and job creation, reduce poverty and high costs of living and to build a capable, ethical and developmental state. For example, a few of these critical areas include the use of artificial intelligence in improving our identity system, saving and clawing back hundreds of billions of Rands and creating an electronic visa system for tourists which number over nine million annually.
Addressing corruption will be assisted through initiatives such as the establishment of the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption as a permanent entity within the NPA and addressing the remaining six issues which have kept us on the Financial Action Task Force grey list.
Some of the high-level infrastructure intentions are to be welcomed, from much-needed dams to focusing on inner city housing and delivering title deeds. Driving urgently and implementing the planned infrastructure is going to be critical given that almost R1 trillion is to be spent by national and provincial governments and their entities over the next three years. The opening up of the involvement of the private sector and the introduction of new financing models to our state infrastructure is important and clearly defines that the state will continue to deliver public goods, as the private sector does perform well in this regard.
We must commend the already published approach to freight logistics and concessions which have great potential to upgrade our logistics and bring competitive forces to help reconfigure Transnet. Commuter rail services have seen a marked improvement and now we must integrate the public transport systems from taxis to trains with single-ticketing systems, integrated communications and with the interests of our commuting public at heart.
The green shoots keeping the energy transition alive whilst many believe short-term fixes to the energy crisis are also critical.
We still have much to do to reverse the effects of apartheid and SONA signalled the intention to change regulations of the Public Procurement Act to ensure businesses owned by women, youth and persons with disabilities receive equitable opportunities in government contracts. The creation of the black empowerment fund is important and hopefully will focus on those who need it across the length and breadth of our country. The success of the Presidential Employment Stimulus providing over 2.2 million work and livelihood opportunities is great to see but we all know it is not enough and requires the private sector, labour and communities to also play their part in addressing the scourge of unemployment and particularly youth unemployment.
Some 60% of our national budget goes on the social wage, and the President outlined the scale of what is now being done, such as 28 million unemployed and vulnerable people receiving social grants, and 10.5 million children going to non-fee paying schools. There is still so much more to be done in these areas and others, such as ramping up the early childhood sector. The release of land and buildings to reduce the social housing backlog even further, whilst also reclaiming hijacked buildings received important attention.
Overall, the SONA showed that the GNU has coalesced around the MTDP goals.
What remains now is to focus attention urgently on implementation and it is to be hoped that next year’s SONA will show precisely what has been done in these and new areas, how the government has become more accountable, transparent and responsive and what consequent action has been implemented to rid all spheres of government of persons who are corrupt, not competent or unresponsive to community needs.
* Dr Michael Sutcliffe and Ms Sue Bannister are Directors of City Insight (Pty) Ltd.
** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of The African.