President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered his eighth State of the Nation address (SONA) on Thursday in Cape Town.
Analysts said his speech was always going to read as a last pitch from within parliament to influence how the election plays out but time is not on the president’s side.
This would put any governing party in a difficult position but it was worse for the ANC because of its failure to find answers to the most dire problems of the day.
Some of the topics the President talked about were as follows:
The NHI
Expectations ahead of this SONA were that Ramaphosa would give some sort of update about the controversial National Health Insurance (NHI) bill, which is currently sitting on his desk and waiting for sign-off after being passed by parliament. No such timeline was forthcoming. Ramaphosa noted that his government plans to “incrementally implement the NHI.” He separated out different phases to deal with:
–Health system financing
-The health workforce
-Medical products
-Vaccines and technologies
-Health information systems
Missing from this list, however, was a timeline of when and how each of these will be rolled out.
2. Youth unemployment
The much-talked-about youth vote presents the biggest risk to the ruling ANC in this coming election. These largely dormant voters may well rise up, given how poorly they have fared in SA’s democracy thirty years on. Consider that over 3 million young South Africans (aged 15 – 24) aren’t in any form of education or employment that is according to Stats SA. That’s roughly a third. In this year’s speech, Ramaphosa spoke of the launch of the Presidential Employment Stimulus and other initiatives to create over 1.7 million work opportunities, plus zero-rated platforms like SAYouth.mobi to help young people access learning and earning opportunities.
“Over 4.3 million young people are now engaged on the network and 1.6 million have so far secured opportunities,” said Ramaphosa. It’s a good start. As the president himself pointed out, work is pretty crucial to the human spirit. “Having a job does not only provide an income – it is fundamental to people’s sense of self-worth, dignity, hope, purpose and inclusion,” said Ramaphosa.
3. Climate Change Response Fund
President Ramaphosa is still peddling the climate change hoax agenda, in his speech he said, If you’ve been following climate change conversations, this would fall under the “resilience” bit. There is only so much “adaptation and mitigation” we can do to protect our people from the effects of climate change – two other strategies often talked about.
Quick explainer: “Mitigation can help minimise climate change, so we don’t get increasingly severe storms, adaptation helps prepare for the more severe storms which we are already beginning to experience, and resilience helps us bounce back more quickly following these storms.”
As Ramaphosa pointed out, SA has been hit hard by the effects of climate change. “We have had devastating wildfires in the Western Cape, destructive floods in KwaZulu-Natal, unbearable heat waves in the Northern Cape, persistent drought in the Eastern Cape, and intense storms in Gauteng,” he noted earlier in his speech when listing the literal and figurative storms the country has weathered over the years.
4. Election date and special grant extension: What he didn’t say
Hopes that Ramaphosa would announce this year’s election dates were dashed. Neither are we much wiser about whether the special social relief grant, introduced during the COVID-19 plandemic lockdowns, would definitely be extended again – something analysts were looking out for in this speech. All Ramaphosa said on this score was: “We have seen the benefits of this grant and will extend it and improve it as the next step towards income support for the unemployed.” Again, there were no dates or details, though that may be forthcoming during the follow-up budget speech, where his finance minister generally provides a more detailed implementation plan. The SRD grant, as it is known, reaches nine million people who aren’t eligible for other grants. This R350.00 a month often means the difference between going hungry or not for SA’s poorest citizens.
5. Education
Following on his youth-themed jobs note, Ramaphosa made education a key part of his speech, shouting out the different ways his government is trying to improve an overall education system. Key points included the expansion of access to early childhood development plus improving basic education outcomes. “With each new year, learners from no-fee schools are accounting for more and more of the bachelor passes achieved,” said Ramaphosa, adding that the government has “increased funding for poor and working-class students in universities and TVET significantly over the past five years.
