The State of the Nation Address is intended to be the President’s take on the state of the South African nation as opposed to a bookkeeping exercise that it has become under Cyril Ramaphosa.
As one diplomat at the Cape Town City Hall remarked in comparing the State of the Union address delivered the day before by Joe Biden with Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (Sona), the US president spoke to people, Ramaphosa to numbers and figures.
The contrast was indeed stark. Ramaphosa was once a charismatic trade union leader. He should be able to connect with ordinary people. His speech, however, sounded more like a CEO speaking to a board of directors and corporate shareholders in a text prepared by the company accountant.
By the time most people had fallen asleep or, as was the case at City Hall, dived on to their cellphones, mention of Nelson Mandela and the values of the Constitution was made, but it was too little, too late.
The speech was a case study of how not to connect to the people suffering the most from political failure.
And this observation, leaving aside the content of the speech, was no better: we will now have five ministers of energy – ministers of energy, public enterprises, cooperative governance (as a result of the declaration of the State of Disaster), finance and a brand-new minister of electricity.
When in chaos, simply create more structures.
State of Disaster
And then there was the declaration of a State of Disaster. It may be legally possible to bring the Eskom crisis into the definition of disaster as set out in the act, but neither the President nor anyone else in government has explained why available legislation cannot be employed and what additional powers the declaration gives to address the problem.
It hands vast powers to a minister who, judging by a previous vote, thinks the President should face impeachment proceedings.
It does appear that, flushed with “triumph” over the handling of Covid-19, the government prefers unfettered power over parliamentary control of executive action.
In summary, no justification has been offered as to how this deviation from parliamentary control of executive power will, in any way, contribute to the alleviation of the electricity crisis.
EFF threat to democracy
The President’s speech was not the worst reflection of the state of the nation. Even by its usual standard of contempt for Parliament and its procedures, the EFF exceeded itself with its conduct.
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