President Cyril Ramaphosa has committed the government to managing public resources wisely and to take a firm stand against corruption that has delayed the agenda to improve people’s lives.
In his keynote address at Freedom Day celebrations in Middelburg, Mpumalanga, on Wednesday, Ramaphosa said SA was a resilient nation and would overcome the challenges it was faced with.
Ramaphosa, who became president in February 2018, promised a new dawn after the Zuma era, but new revelations of fraud and corruption, including during the Covid-19 pandemic, continue to dog his term at the Union Buildings. The president has admitted as much, declaring in August 2020 that the governing ANC, which he leads, “was accused number one” in corruption.
SA faces many challenges including a 35.3% unemployment rate, one of the highest in the world, a struggling economy that declined 6.4% in 2020 and resulted in a loss of about 1.4-million jobs due to Covid, and tensions and conflict between locals and foreign nationals.
In a bid to solve some of these problems the government, through its economic reconstruction and recovery plan, would continue to create an environment conducive for business.
“In return, it is our expectation that business should step up investment in communities and in human capital for the sake of developing SA,” the president said.
“For some in positions of responsibility, the pursuit of self-enrichment was more important than improving the lives of the people,” he said.
The challenging times SA faced over the past two years were “unbelievable”. These included the pandemic, unemployment and the July unrest that ripped Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. The economy lost about R50bn during the mayhem after the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma in July 2021. Warehouses and malls were pillaged and set alight. Car carriers and haulage trucks were also torched.
As the economy was beginning to show signs for recovery, floods hit KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and North West, resulting in more than 400 people losing their lives and thousands displaced.
eThekwini alone is estimated to have suffered R5.6bn in damage to infrastructure including roads, bridges, water, electrical and other critical infrastructure. R1bn has been set aside by the national department of human settlement to assist more than 10,000 people who have lost or sustained damage to their homes.
Operations at the Port of Durban, one of Africa’s busiest ports, were interrupted, with the risk of major supply chain disruptions across Southern Africa.
“Now, that is going to set us back. We have to spend billions rebuilding infrastructure, lives and livelihoods in our various provinces. That takes us back,” said Ramaphosa.
“What this moment needs is for us not to feel and sound defeated. We are equal to the challenge ... as we rebuild our country and economy ... to deliver a better life for all.
“Through the economic reconstruction and recovery plan, government continues to work to create a conducive environment for business. In return, it is our expectation that business should step up their investment in communities and in human capital for the sake of developing SA,” he said.
The president said South Africans were determined to fight corruption and end state capture, which cost the economy about R500bn, and rebuild the institutions of democracy.
“In recent years, the ruinous apartheid inheritance of poverty and unemployment has been worsened by global economic shocks, a devastating pandemic and by our own missteps and shortcomings.”
Ramaphosa described attacks on foreign nationals as a new menace and said they were deeply troubling. “There can be no doubt that we must work urgently to resolve issues of illegal immigration and its impact on our economy and society. But there will never be any justification for violence.”
Meanwhile, DA leader John Steenhuisen said in a statement that “more and more” South Africans were realising that the ANC cannot deliver real freedom. “That’s why the ANC is coming to an end. They won’t be in national government after 2024.”
The EFF said in a statement that not much had changed in realities affecting Africans. This was because SA had operated on a false premise of unity and social cohesion, “without economically altering the ownership of the means of production”, the party said. “Black life in SA is one of squalor, defeat, hopelessness and landlessness, and accordingly we are the most susceptible to disease and tragedy.”
Sizwe Pamla, national spokesperson of labour federation Cosatu, the ANC’s key ally which helped Ramaphosa win the ANC presidency in 2017, said there had been hope on April 27, 1994 that the new administration was going to transform the economy to accommodate the previously disadvantaged majority.
“Sadly, 28 years later that dream remains stillborn. The gap between the rich and the poor has not just widened but SA is the most unequal country in the world, according to the World Bank. Inequalities have risen with about 71% of the population ... living on less than R100 a day,” said Pamla.
Update: April 27 2022
This story has additional information.
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