President Cyril Ramaphosa is facing an almost impossible task of reassuring citizens, business and labour about SA’s future when he delivers this year’s state of the nation address in parliament on Thursday.
Ramaphosa’s government will be under intense pressure to provide urgent solutions to the challenges facing the country, including rolling blackouts, collapsing infrastructure and endemic poverty when he outlines his government’s policies for the coming year.
While Ramaphosa entered his second and final term as ANC party president with a stronger mandate, labour, business and opposition parties are sceptical that he will break from the “business as usual” strategy and take the bold action that is required to put the economy on a better footing.
The speech is likely to be dominated by how he plans to tackle high unemployment and entrenched poverty. He is also expected to devote some of his energies to Eskom and Transnet — the two floundering state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with the potential to trap the economy in a prolonged downturn.
The SA Association of Freight Forwarders (SAAFF) has described the deterioration of Transnet Freight Rail (TFR), which has a near monopoly in transporting movement of cargo to and from ports, as a disaster. It noted that since 2010, TFR had been handling 80% less volume, which has a material effect on the revenue of its clients.
“This operational deficiency, along with the utter destruction of infrastructure and criminality (143 incidents a month), has crippled a core artery in our trading network,” the SAAFF said in a statement.
“SA’s freight demand is exceedingly high, which requires a multi-modal approach. In addition, the increasing rate of damage to road networks can be directly attributed to the lamentable performance of the rail system. We need strong leadership and a change in direction in our SOEs, notably Transnet.”
Cas Coovadia, CEO of Business Unity SA, the country’s biggest business organisation, said the government’s focus should be on attracting investment and putting the country onto a sustainable and inclusive growth path.
“Any other interventions are not sustainable. So, hard choices need to be made on expenditure and there must be increasing efforts to ensure available resources are utilised in an accountable and transparent way and any misuse of resources is harshly dealt with,” Coovadia said.
Ramaphosa’s speech could also give some clues as to how his cabinet will be reconfigured, a reshuffle he is expected to announce days or weeks after the address.
Coovadia said while the timing of the reshuffle was the president’s prerogative, announcing changes soon after the state of the nation address would bring about policy certainty.
Noting their frustrations over the continued energy crisis, business leaders of some of SA’s biggest companies in the consumer goods industry added their voice to calls for an urgent solution. In an open letter to Ramaphosa on Tuesday, they warned that unless the load-shedding crisis was tackled urgently, stable supplies of food, medicines and other essentials cannot be guaranteed.
Signatories to the letter include Massmart, Famous Brands, Shoprite, Burger King, Coca-Cola, Tiger Brands, Pick n Pay and PepsiCo.
“We are alarmed and dismayed by the levels of load-shedding we have all had to endure over the past decade, and which have escalated catastrophically in recent months,” wrote the CEOs of member companies of the Consumer Goods Council of SA in an open letter addressed to Ramaphosa.
While the EFF and the National Freedom Party have vowed not to allow the president to address both houses of parliament on Thursday, the leader of the official opposition, John Steenhuisen, says the upcoming address is unlikely to change SA’s economic prospects.
‘Path of failure’
He said during his presentation of the DA’s alternative state of the nation: “Nothing that President Ramaphosa says on Thursday will change this reality. In fact, Ramaphosa is the one who has taken us down this path of failure over the last five wasted years, during which time this country has rapidly gone backwards on every conceivable metric. The truth is that he has had his chance and spectacularly blew it. The future of this country is no longer up to him, or to his party.”
The EFF, SA’s third-largest political party, has resolved to hold a “national shutdown” on March 20 to demand the “return of electricity” and Ramaphosa’s resignation.
African Transformation Movement leader Vuyo Zungula also called for the president’s resignation. Zungula has filed court papers to oppose Ramaphosa’s bid to have the Constitutional Court overturn the findings of the report by parliament’s independent panel on Phala Phala.
“Mr Ramaphosa has rendered himself a constitutional delinquent who should respect the people of SA by announcing his resignation instead of peddling more lies under the guise of the state of the nation address.”
Two of the country’s biggest labour federations, Cosatu and Saftu, have called for Ramaphosa to address rampant crime and corruption.
“If the president does not come [out] aggressively against this phenomenon — which is widespread and has become an accepted norm in ANC circles, even spilling into society — then we expect no improvement in service delivery,” Saftu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said.
Cosatu spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said: “The government needs to ensure Eskom has all the resources and authority at hand to reduce load-shedding, ramp up targeted high-impact maintenance, and bring on board new generation capacity.
“They also need to slash Eskom’s debt burden and plug its fiscal holes, and tackle the corruption and criminality crippling Eskom.”
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