The political class excels at ignoring the reality that South Africans have to contend with every day. President Cyril Ramaphosa must lead by example and steer the state of the nation address (Sona) on Thursday away from pageantry and towards meaningful introspection.
Ramaphosa’s own fate and legacy are inexorably tied to the country’s political and economic prosperity. He has the full backing of the ANC, which came out of a general council in December having come to terms with the fact that the party needs to reform or it will perish.
The South African economy is showing signs of recovery, with consecutive quarters of growth driven by improved, though modest, expansion and fiscal discipline, including consecutive primary budget surpluses. But in many quarters, the most commonly used word to describe Ramaphosa’s term in office is “disappointing”.
Yes, Eskom, Transnet, SAA and the SA Revenue Service are performing better under Ramaphosa’s administration. But that is a handful in a sea of more than 700 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the country, with many of them underperforming.
“They [SOEs] are beset by poor service delivery, financial difficulties and allegations of corruption,” the Centre for Science and Technology and Innovation at the Human Sciences Research Council notes. “Their performance has significantly deteriorated in the past 15 years. Unclear mandates, poor management, insufficient infrastructure and resources are among the reasons.”
Ramaphosa will be acutely aware that his two predecessors, former presidents Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki, were recalled after the ANC fared poorly in local government elections. Ramaphosa so often seems to know the right thing to do but doesn’t do it until the damage is done. That is simply not good enough in a country where the working and middle class have for the past two decades carried the burden of corruption. So endemic is the scourge that it has even crippled those tasked with enforcing the law, the evidence of which we are seeing play out at the Madlanga commission.
Ramaphosa so often seems to know the right thing to do but doesn’t do it until the damage is done. That is simply not good enough in a country where the working and middle class have for the past two decades carried the burden of corruption.
While the presidency insists there is significant progress in implementing the Zondo commission’s recommendations on state capture across both accountability measures and institutional reforms, experts say what is required is high-level prosecutions for South Africa to turn the tide against the scourge of corruption.
“Despite the Zondo commission’s extensive findings and the subsequent internal disciplinary actions by the ANC against numerous high-profile politicians, with a few being expelled, prosecutions of the majority of individuals implicated remain nonexistent,” Windell Nortje of the University of the Western Cape writes. “To date, the only case brought forward was the first state capture prosecution in 2023, which ended unsuccessfully for the state, resulting in a discharge. Promisingly, the discharge was successfully overturned on appeal in 2025, and the case is set for a retrial. Meanwhile, the long-standing and troubled prosecution of Zuma remains stalled. Additionally, efforts to extradite the Gupta brothers, alleged central figures in the capture network, have failed.”
It may also be a good time for Ramaphosa to assess his executive’s fitness for office and announce a major cabinet shakeup. The DA, the second-largest party in the GNU, is on the cusp of a change of guard, which will be elected at the party’s national conference in April, so that may delay things. But through the GNU, Ramaphosa operates with a comfortable majority in the National Assembly, so he should not be uncomfortable with removing underperforming ministers. The administration must put its shoulder to the wheel.
Time is running out for Ramaphosa to prove that we were right to “Thuma Mina”.
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