SONA | ‘It’s going to be an election campaign speech’ – Political analysts

Every year, the standing president of South Africa delivers a report that tracks the development and progress of the country.

Based on the government’s duty to its society, the report looks at various social, economic and political issues through the lens of indicators.

During the overview address, President Cyril Ramaphosa, in this case, sets out government’s key policy objectives and deliverables for the year ahead, flag challenges and outline interventions to unlock our nation’s potential – the State of the Nation Address (SONA).

As with all previous SONAs, many are waiting to hear where government’s priorities lay.

A starting point for this year's address is a consensus on what to report on, Nelson Mandela University senior politics researcher and analyst Dr Ongama Mtimka tells Drum.

“State of the nation addresses do need for us to have some consensus around what matters enough to be reported on so that we can be able to compare one year to another. Instead of the approach where the president says whatever they want to write home about that year. Obviously though, all of them do have a focus on the key service delivery indicators such as healthcare, education, economy, electricity, infrastructure spending, and the likes. What is seen in each of the SONAs is a sense of what has been achieved in relation to what was promised.”

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For political analyst Professor Mcebisi Ndletyana, the annual address has become an opportunity for “politicians to exaggerate their achievements and underplay their failures”.

“It's election year so it’s going to be an election campaign speech. So I think that would provide a lot of material for journalists to verify the claims that would be made. I anticipate that there will be a lot of claims made. What I anticipate would be an exaggeration of what he has achieved.”

Dr Ralph adds that Eskom, job creation and health development are guaranteed a mention in the report.

Similarly, Dr Ongama expects electricity, and regional trade to be points of discussion.

“Eskom was complaining about limited grid capacity. I think that that's the one big issue that the president might talk to and might offer a solution. In terms of energy, they said last year that they had reached a R1,2 trillion investment target, but how much of that has become projects on the ground that are being implemented? For them to not say anything at all about that, then they would have missed a significant opportunity.”

“They're going to say something about regional trade, especially at a time when they know that there is a lot of criticism that's coming for the ANC around international trade and trade policy arising out of its foreign policy. So, this Israel thing and the loss of export market potential for especially the Western Cape.”

Dr Ongama believes that there will be an emphasis on the success of the African continental free trade adoption as well.

What remains important for Professor Mcebisi though is the return to 2020’s job creation statistics.

Acknowledging that Covid heavily influenced the loss of jobs, he adds that too many promises around the end of loadshedding have also encouraged many to lose faith in the government altogether.

“Eskom obviously is a huge problem. They had made a promise this time last year that loadshedding would come to a halt in December; that by the end of the year, it would be over. But they haven’t done that. What they have done is to reduce the regularity of loadshedding and they will try to hold this up as some kind of achievement."

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Although he would never recommend that one uses SONA as a sole determinant of who to vote for in this year’s general elections, he suggests that everyone weighs what the president will say in SONA against their personal experiences.

“People ultimately vote on the basis of their own lived experience. The reason why ANC has been declining is because people don't trust what the politicians say – they are very critical of that.”

As the country is about to watch the address, Dr Ongama recommends that everyone has an attitude of cautious optimism.

“Cautious in the sense that we know politicians in an election year are going to say just about anything to appease us. Optimistic in the sense that they know that if they can't get things right going forward, South Africans are going to kick them out of government."