In February 2018 the ANC confronted Jacob Zuma, barred him from delivering the state of the nation address (Sona), kicked him out of the Union Buildings and installed Cyril Ramaphosa as our new president. The former trade unionist projected himself as a man in a hurry, keen to implement an agenda of renewal for a state that had been brought to its knees by the court-dodging Zuma.
“We should put all the negativity that has dogged our country behind us because a new dawn is upon us and a wonderful dawn has arrived,” Ramaphosa said in his maiden Sona on February 16 2018.
On February 8, Ramaphosa will ascend that stage again. On February 21, finance minister Enoch Godongwana will also take to the podium to deliver his annual budget.
They might as well not waste our time with these usually all-important speeches, because we know what the problem is here. They have wasted the most precious commodity they had: time.
Over the course of the past six years, Ramaphosa and his cabinet have behaved as if the country, languishing in the doldrums of low economic growth and unemployment, had a long string.
The reforms that were needed were implemented at a glacial pace. Hiring of key leaders for state-owned entities was handled as if the country was not in crisis. Just think about it: André de Ruyter resigned as Eskom CEO in December 2022. His successor will start work only in March 2024. Fifteen months to replace the key executive of such a crucial, embattled entity?
Symbolically, the new dawn has failed to achieve much. Take the case of the masterminds of the state capture project, the Gupta family.
Quite frankly, we did not need to run off and investigate every single bit of state capture. We don’t have the investigators, prosecutors, financial analysts or financial resources to do so. What every South African did want to see, however, was this family — people who had Zuma and Ace Magashule’s sons on their payroll and a corrupt hotline to the CEOs of state-owned enterprises and ministers — in the dock. We have not seen a single high-profile state capture conviction in six years. It makes Ramaphosa, and all of us who had hoped for some accountability for the corruption of our state, look ridiculous.
The failure to appreciate that we do not have time to tarry is why these two speeches in February leave a bitter taste in the mouth. South Africa faces huge challenges. Godongwana reflected on some of them in January, saying: “Right now we have got a challenge because our growth levels are insufficient to be able to cope with higher levels of debt ... I can tell you now, we are operating in a fairly constrained fiscal space so the message we are likely to put across in February is going to be a difficult one.”
Growth and debt were problems that we had in 2018 and should have started dealing with comprehensively back then. We are today trying to deal with a huge budget deficit — and acting surprised by this.
It is difficult to see how a government that has been weak-kneed and unfocused for six years will develop a backbone in the dying minutes of the game
We faced a similar challenge back in 2018. Remember that Malusi Gigaba, the finance minister at the time, announced the first increase in the VAT rate since 1993, hiking it from 14% to 15%. The aim was to plug a revenue gap of nearly R50bn.
Godongwana now has to do one of two things: implement stringent budget cuts or punish consumers and business with increased taxes. With an election looming, it is difficult to see how a government that has been weak-kneed and unfocused for six years will develop a backbone in the dying minutes of the game. Godongwana can’t stare down Cosatu and its public sector affiliate, the National Education, Health & Allied Workers’ Union, with months to go before an election. Ramaphosa can’t start firing ministers when he has Zuma to contend with.
We should not have been here, though. Granted, the Ramaphosa administration had to contend with a pandemic in 2020, but this is not sufficient excuse. The government moved at a snail’s pace to address most of the problems we had, and that is why we are now in such a dire place politically and economically.
This Sona and budget will be meaningless. We will have to wait for the composition of the next administration to see where South Africa is going.
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