I guess I should have known better. Watching the State of the Nation Address 2025 (SONA) live in anticipation of a briefing I would be giving the next day on it, I hoped it would be at least slightly different from the SONAs which Ramaphosa has given since he became President.
Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t expect Ramaphosa to be inhabited by the spirit of Milton Friedman, or some great nation-building statesman, but I thought we could at least get a little bit, a tiny morsel, of evidence that the world had changed since the 2024 election.
After all, the ANC is now kept in power by the very same capitalist, reactionary, counter-revolutionary DA it has spent the last 30 years clashing with.
At first there were some positive signs, Ramaphosa near the start of the speech said, “Our most urgent task is to grow our economy so that we can create jobs, reduce poverty, and improve the lives of all South Africans”, a sentiment that is entirely correct and confirms what we at the IRR have been saying.
He also said that “We need a state that is capable and competent, underpinned by a professional public service.” Once again, correct, however it’s here we really see the cracks.
The ANC has promised a “capable” and “competent” state for years, whilst at the same time pursuing an aggressive strategy of cadre deployment, appointing people to government positions based on party seniority and political loyalty rather than skill. The policy of cadre deployment has been defended in court by Ramaphosa’s ANC.
Ramaphosa also promised a “second wave” of economic reform, under his much vaunted “Operation Vulindlela”. As we’ve seen, the previous wave of economic reform boosted economic growth from 1.5% when Ramaphosa became President in 2018 to the incredible level of 1.6% over the next three years, according to the medium-term budget review in 2024.
Dysfunction
What else could we expect with such bold economic reforms such as “resolving the water crisis” and “addressing local government dysfunction” by reforming the funding model of local government, “localisation”, and “digitising government services”.
With reforms like that, what need do we have for cutting BEE regulations, slashing taxes, reforming labour laws, ending cadre deployment?
Added to this, the President promised massive new infrastructure spending, a new port in the Northern Cape, and Africa’s biggest bridge. How this will be funded, and what will stop an orgy of corruption, BEE-driven overspending and other cost inflation is left up to us to guess.
I suppose he did put more of an emphasis on private-public partnerships, which could be good, if done correctly, or it could be simply a way to reward politically connected companies with government money. It could be a non-starter, if companies are not allowed to make a profit on the infrastructure they are expected to maintain and run. Evidence so far suggests the latter.
Promises were made about a competitive electricity market, reformed visa processes and a new mining rights system, all of which have been promised in previous SONAs and have dragged on slowly, never quite becoming reality. (Ramaphosa laughably referred to the ailing mining sector as a “sunrise” industry.)
Ramaphosa also doubled down on the proposed “Transformation Fund”, saying the scooping up into a government-controlled fund of the money business already spends on social projects would empower “our people, women and persons with disabilities”. His proposal displays either how cynical the ANC is about acquiring resources, or how breathtakingly naive it is about the potential of such a huge pot of money not being plundered. One only needs to look to the lottery or really any other large sum of public money to see that “our people, women and persons with disabilities” will see tiny crumbs from this “Transformation Fund”, whilst an ANC member somewhere can afford his second house in Paris.
Suicidal policies
What about the suicidal policies of expropriation without compensation and NHI?
On expropriation, thankfully Ramaphosa didn’t rhetorically double down, and he even announced more title deeds for poor South Africans, a laughable proposal when he has just signed a bill into law that undermines property rights significantly.
On NHI, Ramaphosa didn’t indicate any pull-back on its implementation, instead offering vague promises of its creation, starting with “a single electronic health record system”. After the DA protested, there has been some talk in the media that NHI won’t be funded in the medium term and so can’t be implemented, but we shall have to see if this is the case. SONA offered us little either way.
Overall, this was a SONA that could have been given in 2019 or 2023 or 2024. It is clear the ANC has refused to grasp that it has lost the election. It has contented itself with the deluded idea that simply implementing all their favourite policies, as has been done since 2009, will end MK and the EFF and keep the ANC in power forever.
The DA needs some of the blame here too. Its horror at the prospect of an ANC-MK alliance, and all the pressure it has come under from business since the election to keep the MK out, have effectively kneecapped their negotiating ability. They’ve been mostly steamrolled on BELA and largely ignored on expropriation. It’s not clear if they’ve managed to get any kind of clear win on NHI.
To rescue the situation and ensure a SONA 2026 that isn’t a repeat of this one, the DA needs to play hardball. Ministers should stick solidly to blocking bad policy and ensuring that all regulations promote good governance and economic growth. They also shouldn’t be afraid to dare the President to fire them, and they should openly criticise other departments. The DA should spend every day reminding the ANC “I’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with me.”
What if the ANC ejects the DA from the GNU and gets into bed with the MK or EFF?
Doom
Good luck to them, doing so will likely doom Ramaphosa and his faction to obscurity and spread the catastrophic dysfunction of these parties into the ANC. After all, the EFF and MK were once part of the ANC, and as it turns out they couldn’t live together in that party back then, so why would they be able to now?
Deep down Ramaphosa knows this, which is why he agreed to a coalition with the DA to begin with. But since then, he has successfully managed to muddle and bully the DA into complying with ANC policy, using things like “cabinet protocol” or “national interest” in bad faith, to constrict what the DA can do.
Politics in SA has changed; it is increasingly fragmenting. If the ANC won’t open their eyes and look around, it is up to their partners in the GNU to drag them kicking and screaming into the light.
[Image: https://pmg.org.za/blog/9FactsaboutSONA2025]
If you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend