Once a plan of action, the state of the nation address has, in the pas few years, morphed into a shimmering government wishlist — one that, more often than not, is left unfulfilled.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s fifth address opening parliament was no different. And once again it will be up to his moribund cabinet to deliver on this wishlist in the year ahead.
The strongest initiative announced by Ramaphosa on Thursday night concerned SA’s energy problems. (As luck would have it, the momentary respite from load-shedding allowed his address to parliament to be beamed access the country.)
Eskom has finally been restructured into three entities — generation, distribution and transmission — “laying the basis for an efficient and modern energy system”, he said.
But that’s only part of the answer.
Ramaphosa also said that Eskom estimates that without additional capacity, there would be an electricity supply shortfall of between 4,000MW and 6,000MW over the next five years as the lifespan of coal-fired power stations come to an end. To remedy this shortfall, Ramaphosa said the government will issue a request for proposals for 2,600MW from wind and solar producers as part of bid window five. Another bid window will open in August 2021.
Easing the onerous licensing requirements for new embedded power generation could also unlock up to 5,000MW of additional capacity and ease the impact of load-shedding, he said.
To make this happen, the government will amend a schedule to the Electricity Regulation Act to allow private firms to generate power, without the need for a licence from the National Energy Regulator of SA. This is what business and Eskom have been lobbying for.
“Eskom has already started work to expedite its commercial and technical processes to allow this additional capacity onto the grid without undue delay,” he said.
However, Ramaphosa also repeated a promise from last year: that the government would buy 2,000MW of emergency power from independent power producers.
Another promise that’s been rattling around for years concerns improving SA’s broadband capacity, to lower the cost of data.
This is at an “advanced stage”, Ramaphosa said. And once again, a new deadline was set for the long-delayed digital migration, which he now says will be concluded by the end of March 2022.
More helpfully, he also announced the extension of social assistance to the poor, as well as workers affected by the pandemic-induced shutdown of the economy.
The monthly R350 grant for the unemployed would be extended for another three months, while the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s temporary employer-employee relief scheme (Ters) would be extended to workers in industries that had been closed over the last lockdown.
As part of his reform agenda, Ramaphosa also announced the formation of a national anticorruption advisory council and an independent statutory anticorruption body that will report to parliament — something agreed by his cabinet last November.
And Ramaphosa told the nation that he has signed performance agreements with his ministers, and these have been published online.
Cabinet: a skills crisis
However, to deliver on yet another set of promises — many made in his previous state of the nation addresses haven’t been implemented — Ramaphosa needs the right team.
It’s clear that until now he’s been tolerant of the failings of a largely ineffectual set of ministers. For example, his intelligence minister, Ayanda Dlodlo, is at loggerheads with bureaucrats attempting to clean house; his social development minister, Lindiwe Zulu, has been insensitive to the plight of the poor; and his communications minister, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, has badly mismanaged the SABC turnaround and the allocation of broadband spectrum.
While there has been talk of a cabinet reshuffle for months, it is likely to happen only after the budget, due to be delivered by finance minister Tito Mboweni soon.
Given the heightened need for a reshuffle due to the death of a key figure in Ramaphosa’s cabinet — minister in the presidency Jackson Mthembu — this reshuffle is likely to be far-reaching.
With his opponents in the ANC — including secretary general Ace Magashule and former president Jacob Zuma — entangled in fighting for their own survival, it is an opportune time for Ramaphosa to appoint a team more fit for purpose.
He didn’t have this flexibility before: his initial cabinet picks were constrained by the need to appease various factions in the ANC and the tripartite alliance.
And as the list of promises grow, the need for a reshuffle has never been more urgent, if Ramaphosa wants to actually deliver on the new plans he announced on Thursday.
*Marrian is deputy editor of FM
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