Political parties react sharply to Ramaphosa’s Sona, questioning delivery, accountability and election-year promises.
Leaders of opposition political parties called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to ensure the commitments he made during his State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Thursday are not empty promises.
EFF leader Julius Malema criticised Ramaphosa for regurgitating things he said in previous Sona speeches.
Malema dismisses recycled promises
Speaking after Ramaphosa’s address before Parliament in Cape Town, Malema said he welcomed the deployment of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to gang-ridden areas, but had heard everything else before.
“Today, the difference is that he’s saying them with energy,” Malema said.
He also attacked Ramaphosa’s tendency to establish task teams, after the president announced that he put together a task team to tackle the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) pandemic and another to restructure Eskom and establish a fully independent state-owned transmission entity.
“And this thing of task teams – task team after task team – it’s a person who’s failing to execute their own responsibility, and they shift it to other people,” Malema said.
“So, it’s a confirmation that he doesn’t have the necessary capacity in the government of national unity to deal with issues that he wants to deal with. So, we are here again, listening to a man who is using a government platform during an election year to launch a campaign, to campaign for his political party.”
Rise Mzansi calls for urgency and accountability
Rise Mzansi leader Songezo Zibi said the Sona delivered no surprises, and what is now required is “urgency, care and accountability”.
“We have heard big promises made in the past, yet when the Budget is delivered weeks later, there is rarely an indication that the government has aligned its funding with its commitments,” Zibi said.
“The talking is over. It is now time to urgently deliver, care for the people and hold accountable those who betray our constitutional principles and values.”
Zibi said he will reserve his judgment until the Budget is delivered.
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ActionSA questions accountability
Athol Trollip, provincial chairman of ActionSA in the Eastern Cape, said Ramaphosa delivered a better speech than he expected.
He described it as a speech with “less fairytales” covering “a lot of issues”.
“I think he was very candid about the state of local government, and how broken it is and how systematically, it’s been broken over the last 30 years,” Trollip said.
“But he accepted no responsibility for that. It’s his government that has broken local government.”
The former mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay said Ramaphosa spoke at length about the intention to focus on water infrastructure, albeit too late.
The Vaal River systems are full of water, he said, but there is no water flowing from the taps.
DA backs delivery and vaccine rollout plans
DA leader John Steenhuisen called the speech “solid” and different from previous addresses.
“There wasn’t any fancy gimmicks or structuring, it got down to the brass tacks of what is wrong and what needs to be done,” Steenhuisen said.
ALSO READ: READ: President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address in full
He added that the Sona highlighted a lot of the DA’s work, which he was proud of.
What remains now, Steenhuisen said, is implementation and going for growth “in a big way”.
Speaking as the minister of agriculture and commenting on the foot-and-mouth disease vaccines, Steenhuisen said the government is in the process of procuring millions of vaccines from three different suppliers internationally.
“The first million is going arrive in the next five to seven days, and then we’ll roll that out. But it will obviously be a process that involves the private veterinarians and animal health technicians,” he said.
He added that rollout is a public-private partnership and the goal is to vaccinate 80% of the targeted herds by the end of the year and to reduce FMD incidents by 70%.
“We’re confident now that we have the vaccines – excellent vaccines from Argentina, from Turkiye, from Botswana – but also our own locally produced vaccines, that, for the first time, are going to be rolled out in the field.”
SANDF deployment to begin ‘within weeks’
Commenting on the president’s announcement that members of the SANDF will be deployed to gang-ridden areas, United Democratic Front leader and Deputy Minister of Defence Bantu Holomisa said plans are in place “to roll out the soldiers to do their work as per the instruction by the president”.
This, he said, could happen within two weeks.
Holomisa also called on the public to cooperate with the soldiers and not act violently towards them.
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