Ramaphosa gave an unintentionally hilarious election speech at the Cape Town City Hall.
One feels for the speechwriters who had to put together the nearly 7 000 words that president Cyril Ramaphosa recited in 100 minutes exactly last Thursday evening.
They were obviously given a brief. Never mind the state of the nation. In fact, let’s avoid the state of the nation as much as we can. Instead, write a paean to 30 years of ANC rule, to justify why the people should re-elect us in a few months’ time.
Ramaphosa started his State of the Nation Address (SONA) by recalling the glorious dawn of democracy, which was indeed, as he said, ‘a new era of hope, reconciliation and nation building’.
We must never, ever forget that the ANC deserves sole credit for the country’s liberation from apartheid, and that Saint Nelson continues to bless the ANC’s endeavours to this day.
It was time for the first gag of the evening:
‘We have established strong institutions to protect the fundamental freedoms and human rights of all people.
‘We have transformed the lives of millions of South Africans, providing the necessities of life and creating opportunities that never existed before.
‘We have enabled a diverse economy whose minerals, agricultural products and manufactured goods reach every corner of the world, while creating jobs in South Africa.’
That may have been true for the first 15 years of democracy, when poverty rates declined, unemployment rates fell, and basic utilities and a social safety net were rolled out to millions of people who had been neglected by the apartheid regime.
But here stood Ramaphosa, making these claims after another 15 years in which many of those gains were undone: poverty levels began to rise again, unemployment skyrocketed from below 20% to a world record 33%, mining production, capital investment, and employment collapsed, and GDP per capita fell 22% from its 2011 peak.
Litany of excuses
‘Just as we cannot deny the progress South Africans have made over the last 30 years,’ he said, ‘nor should we diminish the severe challenges that we continue to face.’
Refreshing honesty, perhaps? Taking responsibility for the ANC’s failures?
Far from it. Instead, he rattled off a litany of excuses.
There have been ‘events beyond our borders’, like the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008, which he said ‘brought to an end a decade of strong growth and faster job creation’. That was 17 years ago, and he’s still blaming it for South Africa’s challenges in 2024.
However, it was time for his next joke. The greatest damage, he said, was caused during the era of state capture.
He said that it lasted a decade, and spoke of that era in the passive voice, as if it wasn’t the ANC that brought us state capture, and as if he wasn’t a heartbeat away from the presidency – and in charge of cadre deployment – for half of it.
Then came the punchline: ‘But South Africans, including many honest and dedicated public officials, fought back and worked together to defeat state capture.’
That brought the house down. Perhaps Ramaphosa thinks that then-deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo’s inquiry actually fixed everything.
In the real world, the recommendations of the Zondo report have not been implemented. Ramaphosa has not acted against any of the senior members of his cabinet or the ANC National Executive Committee that were implicated in the report.
Of the 1 500 people implicated, a grand total of two have been convicted – former head of the Free State Department of Human Settlements, Mpho Mokoena, and former SAA board chairperson Dudu Myeni. Both received suspended sentences. Last I checked, there were four state capture cases still before the courts.
State capture wasn’t defeated, Mr President. It continued under your watch, and continues today.
He also blamed the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Covid-19 pandemic, gender-based violence and climate change for South Africa’s struggles, but believes that ‘our country has weathered every storm’.
Fictional girl
To illustrate how glorious the first 30 years of democracy under ANC rule really were, Ramaphosa told a story.
It is something of a tradition during speeches such as this to invite some sympathetic commoners to join the great and the good for the gala occasion. They typically serve as props to illustrate how they’ve benefited from the awesome policies of the incumbent president.
This year, a factual account would not do, so the speech writers came up with a fictional girl, Tintswalo, hypothetically born in 1994, and theoretically the beneficiary of a lifetime of ANC largesse. In Ramaphosa’s telling, she owes everything in her life, from her basic needs to her housing to her medical care to her education to her job, to the state.
This story is rather insulting to the hypothetical Tintswalo, suggesting as it does that ‘democracy’s child’ was unable to stand on her own feet, and needed ‘the state’s employment equity and black economic empowerment policies’ to succeed.
It also does not reflect the experience of the average young South African. For six out of ten people of Tintswalo’s age, there is no prospect of employment at all. Their fairy tales have an unhappy ending.
Misemployment
Of course, Ramaphosa knows this, so he launches into his next big idea. He says he knows you need economic growth to reduce unemployment (and growth is the biggest plothole in Cyril’s entire SONA fantasy, as Terence Corrigan argues here), but ‘we cannot wait to provide the work that many of democracy’s children need’.
Instead, he extolled the supposed steps the government took to address youth unemployment.
The Expanded Public Works Programme is the only employer in South Africa that is exempt from minimum wage laws and pays workers on average R160 per day, compared to a minimum wage of R220.
By doling out jobs to people who use flags and spades to do in weeks what flickering lights and backhoes could do in hours, Ramaphosa claims to have created ‘1.7 million work and livelihood opportunities’.
Unfortunately, the unemployment rate didn’t notice because most of those jobs were temporary.
The government also ‘placed more than one million school assistants in 23 000 schools,’ which works out to 43.5 underpaid flunkies per school. Again, the unemployment rate continued to sink.
He claims that 4.3 million young people are now engaged on a mobile platform created under the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, of which ‘1.6 million have so far secured opportunities’. Note, not jobs. Just ‘opportunities’.
Once again, the unemployment rate didn’t budge.
All these projects essentially throw taxpayer money at unemployed people, for no or very little productive work. Let’s call it ‘misemployment’, or ‘phantom employment’.
Perhaps he knows this, because he also announced that he will ‘extend’ and ‘improve’ the Social Relief of Distress Grant, which nine million unemployed people currently receive, ‘as the next step towards income support for the unemployed’.
Imagine, when all the unemployed are paid for being unemployed, unemployment won’t matter any more! And all people have to do to reach this utopia is to continue to vote ANC!
Where Ramaphosa expects to find the money to fund all this largesse he did not say.
Reprise
Ramaphosa is so excited about his success at defeating state capture that he reprised his performance of earlier in the evening:
‘One of the overriding challenges this administration had to deal with when it took office was state capture and corruption.
‘Our first priority was to put a decisive stop to state capture, to dismantle the criminal networks within the state and to ensure that perpetrators faced justice.
‘We had to do that so that we could restore our institutions and rebuild our economy.’
Parliament laughed and laughed. Of course, our economy has not been rebuilt. Our institutions have not been restored. Perpetrators have not faced justice. Criminal networks within the state continue to operate. And there is no sign that state capture is indeed over.
Of all the adjectives one might apply to our comic-in-chief, ‘decisive’ is not one of them.
‘We will not stop until every person responsible for corruption is held to account.
‘We will not stop until all stolen money has been recovered.
‘We will not stop until corruption is history.’
Dear Leader, you haven’t even started yet.
‘Progress’
‘Over the past five years, we have worked earnestly to revive our economy from a decade of stagnation and protect it from both domestic and global shocks,’ Ramaphosa declared. ‘We have made progress’.
Let’s evaluate his claims of progress.
‘Our economy today is three times larger than it was 30 years ago.’
That isn’t quite true. It is actually only 2.6 times larger. This, while the global economy is 3.6 times larger, and emerging markets have performed even better.
This also papers over the rather obvious crack that South Africa’s GDP is lower today, in dollar terms, than it was in 2010.
‘We have laid a foundation for growth through far-reaching economic reforms, an ambitious investment drive, and an infrastructure programme that is starting to yield results.’
So why isn’t the economy growing? According to Corrigan, the International Monetary Fund revised its growth forecast for 2024 down to 1%, and even the South African Reserve Bank, which routinely overestimates future growth, has us down for 1.2%, which only barely exceeds the country’s population growth rate.
‘Companies continue to invest, thousands of hectares of farmland are being planted, new factories are being opened and production is being expanded.’
Yet South Africa’s gross capital formation is a mere 15% of GDP, down from 21% of GDP in 2008, and investors are bailing on South African stocks, to find higher growth and safer economic climates elsewhere.
Electricity
‘We are on track to resolve the most important constraints on economic growth by stabilising our energy supply and fixing our logistics system.’
Told you he’s a comedian.
‘We set out a clear plan to end load-shedding, which we have been implementing with a single- minded focus through the National Energy Crisis Committee.
‘We have delivered on our commitments to bring substantial new power through private investment on to the grid, which is already helping to reduce load-shedding.’
A few hours after he finished talking, Eskom announced Stage 4 loadshedding. A day later, it went to Stage 6. The less said, the better.
Flights of fancy
This is where he once again embarked upon his customary flights of fancy.
‘With our abundance of solar, wind and mineral resources, we are going to create thousands of jobs in renewable energy, green hydrogen, green steel, electric vehicles and other green products,’ he gushed.
‘We are going to set up a Special Economic Zone in the Boegoebaai port to drive investment in green energy. There is a great deal of interest from the private sector to participate in the boom that will be generated green hydrogen energy projects.’
Now, if you’ve never heard of Boegoebaai, don’t be too hard on yourself. It is perhaps the single most obscure place in South Africa. It doesn’t appear on any map. It is, allegedly, 60km north of Port Nolloth, and 20km south of the border with Namibia. There is literally nothing there.
Absolutely everything, from the port, the green hydrogen plant, the solar farms, the factories, the workshops, the transmission lines and the accommodation, will have to be built.
It is also the single most remote place in South Africa. You couldn’t find a worse place to live, work or generate electricity if you tried. It is far from literally everywhere that actually needs energy.
The government is also just about to restore our ports and rail network to ‘world-class standards’. They have, according to Ramaphosa, a roadmap to go from the worst in the world to world-class. All he needs now is a War Room, I guess, like the one he chaired between 2014 and 2019 that made Eskom world-class.
The government has also created a Climate Change Response Fund. This makes complete sense, because all the other cookie jars are empty.
Humble brag
This one is funny. ‘We completed the auction of broadband spectrum after more than a decade of delays, resulting in new investment, lower data costs and improved network reach and quality.’
Taking credit for achieving a thing ‘after more than a decade of delays’ shows just how empty the barrel is from which Ramaphosa had to scrape ANC success stories.
Here’s another good one: ‘Life expectancy has increased from 54 years in 2003 to 65 years in 2023. Maternal and infant deaths have declined dramatically.’
This is a classic case of cherry-picking, and where he picked that cherry does not reflect well on the ANC.
You see, in 1993, life expectancy was 63 years, but then the ANC ruined it by refusing to give HIV/Aids patients life-saving medications. The decline to 54 years by 2003 reflects several hundred thousand unnecessary deaths per year caused by deliberate ANC policy.
So sure, it has recovered to 65 in the two decades since then, but recovery from the ANC’s gross dereliction of its duty of care for the people of South Africa isn’t the flex Ramaphosa thinks it is.
Rich swallows
‘Just this week, we published new regulations to reform our visa system, which will make it easier to attract the skills that our economy needs and create a dynamic ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship.’
Sure, sure, but not before you kicked out all the rich swallows laden with pounds and euros because of a backlog on visa renewals.
‘To support growth in the mining sector, we are moving ahead with the modernisation of our mining rights licensing system and are launching an exploration fund to support emerging miners and exploit new mineral deposits.’
This will be because mining companies don’t like the fact that mineral rights were nationalised and aren’t spending any money on exploration themselves. In 2004, South Africa commanded 5.5% of the world’s exploration budget. At last count, it was down to 0.8%.
But never mind! Cyril will ride to the rescue and go explore himself, on the taxpayer’s dime.
‘Through this, mining, which was the bedrock on which the South African economy was built, will once again become a sunrise industry.’
This would be the same industry that has shed 41% of its jobs and 67% of its output in the 16 years leading up to 2022.
Poverty
Ramaphosa has to lie in order to burnish the turd that is 30 years of ANC misrule.
And he does: ‘In 1993, South Africa faced a significant poverty challenge, with 71.1% of its population living in poverty.’
That’s true.
‘However, under the democratic government, there has been a consistent decline in these numbers.’
That’s half true.
‘By 2010, the poverty rate had dropped to 60.9%, and it continued to decrease, reaching 55.5% percent in 2020, as reported by the World Bank.’
And that’s a clanger of a lie. Allow me to quote the World Bank: ‘The percentage of the population living below the upper-middle-income country poverty line fell from 68% to 56% between 2005 and 2010 but has since trended slightly upwards, to 57% in 2015, and is projected to have reached 60% in 2020.’
Evil cackle
When he came to the promise of implementing the National Health Insurance scheme, against which literally everyone outside the ANC has warned it, he went a little off-script. With something resembling an evil cackle, he said the Bill had arrived on his desk, and he’s ‘looking for a pen’.
On the upside, Ramaphosa has solved the great problem of gender-based violence. He said the goal is to end it altogether by ‘mobilising all of society’. In that regard, he says, the ANC government ‘support[s] the call for a pledge that men in South Africa are invited to take to demonstrate their personal commitment to ending this scourge’.
That’ll show those violent drunks who beat women what’s what!
Ramaphosa literally got that idea from some schoolkids on a playground and thought it would be a marvellous idea to implement nationwide.
Soon enough, however, he was off in his fantasy world again: ‘In the past year, we have come together with social partners to end load-shedding, address the challenges in the logistics sector, tackle crime and corruption, and accelerate job creation.’
Well, that’s that sorted. Now, onto more entertaining things like… let me page through the speech quickly… there it is: ‘high-speed rail, focusing initially on the Johannesburg to Durban corridor’.
‘Democratic government’
It was interesting, throughout that he didn’t claim all these successes for the ANC government. He claimed them for the ‘democratic government’.
He appeared to be slyly insinuating that any attempt to remove the ANC from power and install a new government would be undemocratic and would undo all the gains of democracy.
Finally, he invoked Saint Nelson again, to cloak himself in stolen glory. Mandela had said ‘that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb’.
The quote was quite meaningful for Mandela, who indeed had climbed a great hill. It is entirely inappropriate for Ramaphosa, who cannot take credit for having climbed a great hill.
In his five years in office, he has done nothing. He has been spineless. He has been indecisive. And what he did do, made matters worse.
Ramaphosa’s SONA speech was a very wordy effort to polish a turd. This country is today much worse off than it was in 2018, when Ramaphosa promised us a New Dawn, and said, ‘Thuma mina,’ send me.
It’s time to send him on his way, so we can begin to repair the damage his ANC government has done to the economy and the country.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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Image: Flickr, GCIS