Serious times ahead: President Cyril Ramaphosa
President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered a State of the Nation address (Sona) that was at worst shameful electioneering and, at best, an overly sanguine synopsis of our country.
In the parable of Tintswalo, his idealistic load-shedding predictions, promises to rout corruption and bent articulation of the reality of South Africa, Ramaphosa told the nation what it wanted to hear instead of the difficult truths it needed to accept.
Our leader-in-chief can, and has been, called out for his speech, but we can at least agree that the picture of the country he drew is one we’d love to live in. His delusion is our dream.
In media circles we regularly chastise ourselves and our colleagues for falling for Ramaphoria. Yet even in hindsight it’s a harsh critique. His 2017 Thuma Mina pitch was easy to buy into precisely because it promised to take us where we wanted to go. Stumbling after the dishonesty of the “Zuma years”, we yearned for a figure to revive the optimism that once permeated our society. Ramaphosa’s rhetoric is the embodiment of the South African dream.
It is tragic that that dream has not yet materialised. But even more disturbing is it is not shared by many in the president’s circle and party.
In the Sona debate this week, the National Council of Provinces’ deputy chairperson Sylvia Lucas — famed for spending R50 000 on fried chicken — stood up and without irony declared: “Load-shedding isn’t the end of the world … South Africans know we come from a past where we wrote matric by candlelight.”
There is no place in intelligent conversation for such flippancy. Load-shedding has been devastating to our economy and our people. It has troubled businesses, caused catastrophic damage to healthcare systems and has undeniably been a poisonous disruption to the lives of most people. It is not hyperbolic to suggest that to many it has quite literally been the end of their world.
Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe was equally eager to set the record straight. On the issue of cadre deployment, he pooh-poohed the notion that it has been a hindrance to good governance and instead extolled the virtues of its value to racial transformation.
“Cadre development has changed that reality,” he said of the former prevalence of white director generals. “The reality of the matter is, we will do it. You will get your report, but we will continue deploying people that are capable.”
Whether ANC members want to contradict the words of the president is their business. But it becomes an issue when it is forgotten, or disregarded, that they serve the people of South Africa, not their party.
The mentality of denial and blame shifting has landed us where we are in 2024. If Ramaphosa wants to make a difference, he has to sell his dream to his cabinet and bench, not us.