INSIGHT | Ramaphosa’s optimism amid SA’s challenges — hope for a new era

This year may feel like SA has so much to be grateful for, despite plenty of obstacles ahead as the country charts a new course. That is only because successive governments over the past decade have done so little to implement decisions and promises seriously that many have forgotten what transformation under an accountable, responsive and open government looks like. Overall, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s message to the nation in his 10th state of the nation address last Thursday carried optimism, observing that “We have turned a corner.

We are leaving behind an era of decline,” and promising to move the needle forward on economic growth in many sectors of the economy. In the past, the nation has been clear about what it does not want but divided over what it does after years of state capture, and faintly suspicious about any politician’s chances of achieving it. What stood out this year is the developing sense that the government is getting closer to implementing a coherent vision for fighting poverty, unemployment, inequality, crime, and climate change, even if it does so using a sketch strategy for getting there.

In this climate, the risk has always been that even moves in the right direction — such as establishing commissions and committees to deal with our battered criminal justice system, economic stagnation, the escalating water crisis, and gender-based violence — still come across as ad hoc opportunity-grabs rather than principled efforts to position SA as an attractive investment destination, run by an efficient, accountable, responsive and open government. For a government that is supposedly focusing on achieving economic growth, the speech sounds closer to the realisation that our poverty and unemployment problems are part of SA’s poor economic growth and poor governance problem, and that we need redoubled collaborative efforts to implement policies and promises to fix the nation — not just small changes or more bolt-ons. Identifiable and shared GNU values featured prominently in the speech, not shying away from affirming the political centre.

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What some may disagree with is the president’s framing of the GNU not as a political compromise, but as a constitutional duty rooted in dignity, equality, non-racialism and non-sexism. After a tumultuous run-up to a make-or-break moment after another calendar year for the government, the president seems to have struck the right balance, quick to praise the GNU, confirming that the economy is gaining momentum, while also warning that progress will collapse without unity, discipline and mutual respect. In its unfiltered state, the country is emblematic of GNU weaknesses that dominated most of last year. It is mired with missed opportunities to meaningfully involve social partners in crucial decisions.

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