JUDITH FEBRUARY: SONA 2025 - Ramaphosa must be sharp, clear and set the tone for his GNU

As we contemplate the President’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) this week, it’s worth reflecting on our democracy, which has often stayed afloat in spite of the faltering and venal ANC.

In this context, it is easy to forget that at every turn, young as we are, South Africans have fought tooth and nail for this democracy; at the height of state capture, Thuli Madonsela, then-public protector, showed her mettle. A president was eventually charged. When that same president sent his rogues to attempt a takeover of National Treasury, decent men and women within thwarted those attempts. They paid a price personally and politically for that.

Civil society pushed back, the media pushed back and our Constitutional Court, even under the mostly unimpressive leadership of Moegeng Moegeng, held firm. In July 2021, the political forces in our country who would consign us to the scrapheap, attempted an insurrection. It was brutal and frightening but equally showed that the majority of South Africans do not want this country to burn - for anyone - least of all a flawed and corrupt former president.

Last year, when the ANC lost an election, it did not attempt to cling to power, instead, it formed a GNU. Of course, each day brings with it different challenges but 30 years on, with ten years of state capture in between and a deeply flawed and corrupt ANC, this can be expected.

We have much work to do in our country, but we should always remain clear-eyed about the way in which we articulate our challenges while not falling prey to fact-free assertions and scare tactics like those we have seen this week regarding the Expropriation Act. We should heed the lessons the US is offering right now - that democracy is made and remade every day and that we leave it to those in power at our peril. Never before has truth mattered more and never before has the staunch defence of our young institutions mattered more.

As the President comes to town, his presidency remains marked by the insipid. He seems far more comfortable pondering the G20 presidency than dealing with issues at home, often quite typical of presidents in their last terms. The GCIS website is awash with entreaties to tune in to SONA 2025. The strap-lines are variously, "Working together to accelerate our development of a new era for South Africa". With load shedding returned on the weekend and unemployment at a stubborn 32.1% in the last quarter, most South Africans would be forgiven for not feeling the joy of this "new era".

When the President addressed the nation last year this time, the ANC was solely in charge of the country with no GNU in sight, but the May election saw the ANC support tumble to 40.18%. The GNU is imperfect and has too many interlocutors, that undermine its stability. And we fool ourselves if we believe that things are settled, leaving aside the threat of the uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) Party, its noise and dangerous rhetoric. It has now taken over the mantle of the EFF as disruptors and anti-constitutionalists.

The GCIS continues: "The State of the Nation follows the Opening of Parliament in July last year where the President detailed the key priorities of the 7th Administration. The 2025 SoNA will advance our national priorities by expanding on key programmes such as the Presidential Employment Stimulus, the Energy Action Plan and the Infrastructure Investment Plan. The President will detail how we will ensure lasting and sustainable energy security through the implementation of the Energy Action Plan and the Electricity Regulation Amendment Act. Importantly, he will also outline the work of government to address the looming crisis of water security that poses a threat to the quality of life and economic prospects of all South Africans."

These are all crucial and the President, we are told, will spend time on the question of a National Dialogue. This is all well and good but the president would do well to cut to the chase and set the tone for his GNU while he is still able to do so. It has lacked coherence and a proper communication strategy with ministers contradicting each other in public too often. The crown lies uneasily on Ramaphosa’s head as he seeks to balance the interests of his party with those of the country, with these being often entirely incompatible. The road ahead for the GNU is anything but smooth.

The recent controversy over the BELA Act and the Expropriation Act has shown this starkly, and there will be many other examples that will play out behind the scenes and in sensationalist media coverage. And his Cabinet, with some misfits like Thembi Simelane and Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, should surely be reshuffled. So while GCIS speaks of "joy", ordinary South Africans will be hard-pressed to find any amid the crisis that has unfolded in the DRC and the Stilfontein mining disaster both of which have shown a government lacking in compassion and unprepared for disaster. Add to this the daily dose of indignities suffered by the poor, it makes a farce of attempts like the BELA Act and also the proposal of the NHI.

There is very little money to implement either and in the case of the NHI, the healthcare system is so broken it is a fool’s errand. But we can expect the President to trumpet both pieces of legislation as a pander to the populists in his party. He has spent a lot of time as President pandering to the party, with little effect. He should stop doing so but it’s probably too late to ask him to be his own man. In November 2019, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was challenged by her staff to record a clip of what her government had achieved in its first two years. She was challenged to do so in less than two minutes. Eventually, Ardern finished in two minutes and 56 seconds. She rattled off what had been done in simple language and with facts and figures, for instance, “creating 92,000 jobs”.

South Africa is not New Zealand, obviously, and our challenges are structural, historic and complex, yet this video provides a lesson in simplicity and accountability. Both are in short supply in the South African government. Instead of yet another yawn-inducing and lengthy SONA, perhaps Ramaphosa can follow Ardern’s plain language report back? It would serve to focus all our minds and also allow the President to finally dispense with the clunky, uninspiring rhetoric of successive years. Ramaphosa, with the power of the presidency, could try to set the tone in a short, sharp speech dealing with electricity generation, infrastructure, the economy (jobs) and education.

The rest of the death by detail can be left to ministerial briefings which will follow next week.