As South Africa distils last night’s State of the Nation Address (Sona) – some of it good, some less so, and some of it a case of “we’ve heard it all before” – the jury is out about the extent to which it buttressed Cyril Ramaphosa’s waning credibility.
That’s to say last night’s Sona performance, or lack thereof, didn’t actually chip away some more at the President’s crumbling hold on power.
According to Herman Pretorius, analyst and head of strategic initiatives at the Institute of Race Relations, “Ramaphosa must know that his credibility, whatever is left of it, is at stake.
“South Africans are painfully aware of the real state of the nation.”
Pretorius mentioned several reasons why the country’s electorate was losing faith in the president, especially considering that we find ourselves in a year of municipal polls that could be postponed because of Covid-19.
“Onerous labour regulation and laws have killed jobs and locked the youth out of economic participation.
“The threat of expropriation without compensation, manifested in the fabricated land debate, the gutting of the Bill of Rights, the aggressive push of the Expropriation Bill, and the grubby stitch-up with corporate entities on assets prescription and seizure, have slit the investment jugular of our economy.”
These cement shoes around the country’s feet as it treads water, compounded by Eskom’s death-spiral, “are dragging what remains of economic productivity to rock-bottom levels”, Pretorius said.
“Despite these crises being clear evidence of government failures, experienced tangibly and tragically by South Africans, President Ramaphosa’s government has shown no inclination to address the fundamental policy errors that led to South Africa entering the Covid-19 storm in a disastrous socio-economic state.”
