President Cyril Ramaphosa’s speech on Thursday night — the first state of the nation address (Sona) to be held outside parliament — was a stab at asserting sovereignty in a tenuous time for SA.
It matters that, in the wake of a suspect January blaze that razed parliamentary buildings, Ramaphosa decided to persist with the stately affair. Whatever losses the government incurred, it was evidently worth the cost. Note that Ramaphosa’s government bankrolled the pomp and ceremony, even with the added complications associated with a last-minute venue change to the Cape Town city hall.
Sona 2022 cost an estimated R1.2m for Thursday alone and R4m overall. Compare this to 2021’s pared down Sona with a price tag of about R100,000.
In 2022, Ramaphosa spoke in person from a stately building. Rather than a contemporary alternative to the charred parliamentary chamber, the president spoke from the same location where, in 1990, his political mentor raised a “decisive moment” of his own. On February 12 1990, then newly liberated Nelson Mandela spoke to a throng of supporters from the city hall’s balcony.
Mandela’s speech included his urging that: “Our struggle has reached a decisive moment. We call on our people to seize this moment so that the process towards democracy is rapid and uninterrupted.”
Fast forward more than three decades to when Ramaphosa spoke of the “extraordinary circumstances” gripping SA. This was, he said, a moment in which “old certainties are unsettled and new possibilities emerge”. While there was the promise of “great progress”, the horrifying inverse — the collapse of a country, the destruction of democratic institutions, the return of state capture 2.0 and with a vengeance — is a disturbingly vivid possibility.
“The path we choose now will determine the course for future generations,” Ramaphosa said. The solemnity of an arm of the democratic state crumbling in a blaze was not lost on him. Flames engulfed the “seat of our democracy” and, began Ramaphosa, to many this reflected “broader devastation” on account of the pandemic, rising unemployment and deepening poverty. In the final lines of his unforgivably long (and sometimes dull) speech, he was frank: SA had suffered a number of “damaging blows” recently, faced “steep and daunting challenges” and “we are engaged in a battle for the soul of this country”.
Past crises, he said, were always overcome. “Time and time again, we have pulled ourselves back from the brink of despair,” Ramaphosa said.
SA cannot lean on its self-defined exceptionalism in perpetuity. Sona 2022 was as much a political statement in style as it was in substance. It was a show of Ramaphosa’s administration, an attempt at making his presence — as head of state — known even when (perhaps especially because) the usual venue for the stately affair is in disrepair. Wings of parliament, both literal and figurative, are in a state of ruin. It is not a good look, not least for a leader who faces mutiny from within his own ranks, who is lily-livered when it comes to disciplining his own ministers, and who is beholden to his designs on a second term as ANC leader.
Ramaphosa did neither himself nor his cabinet any favours brushing away terrifying scenes of public violence, looting mobs descending on businesses, threats to the country’s going concern and the bloodiest weeks in post-democratic SA with his talk of collective responsibility. The rule of law was held hostage with apparent ease and speed.
“The expert panel found that cabinet must take overall responsibility for the events of July 2021. This is a responsibility that we acknowledge and accept,” Ramaphosa said. His mute cabinet gazed on in their finery.
If, as the president says, we’re engaged in a battle for SA’s soul, it is worth remembering what dragged us into the war. The president has called for help in rebuilding the country; but he hasn’t named and shamed those who demolished it. At war with those who undermine the sovereignty and rule of law of our great nation and at risk of losing his political tenure at conference later in 2022, the people’s president must be bolder, fiercer and more direct in battling his adversaries.
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