President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address on 8 February 2024, was merely another performance staged with the aim of garnering votes in the upcoming election.
The theme for the 2024 SONA is “Leave no-one behind,” but the question is, to whom does it refer? ANC cadres? We can certainly ask. It is the country’s food providers who are left behind given that 96% of land reform programmes fail. Cadres benefit, not farmers.
The agricultural sector creates the most jobs, but still only a handful receives support from the government. In agriculture, transport logistics are of cardinal importance for foreign exports and to put food on consumers’ tables. In the previous SONA, we heard that underperforming ports and railways would receive attention, but it remains a challenge for our farmers.
In the past few years, agriculture has learned a very clear lesson about the difference between words and actions. We have learned that the promises President Cyril Ramaphosa makes in his State of the Nation Address are not implemented. They are always empty words that mean nothing for South Africa’s progress. Just look at how our unemployment rate has risen from 29.1% in 2019 to 31.9% in 2024. Inflation has also increased by 1.74% since 2019.
“Tonight’s promises of improvement sound very familiar – we also heard them in previous years,” says Bennie van Zyl, TLU SA General Manager. “It is announced that billions of rands have been earmarked to do this, but the same people who caused the problem, are now the ones who have to rectify them”
If words led to actions we could be excited by SONA. In reality, it can only happen if experts with integrity and a sense of responsibility give life to these promises.
“It is easy to talk about what needs to be done, but history destroys SONA. South Africa realises that ANC policy cannot produce what it promises. Tonight, we have witnessed that the ANC still prefers to pursue ideology for the preservation of the ANC as the ruling party. Promises that the people want to hear are made, while we are saddled with a bankrupt government that does not have the ability to fulfill its promises.
“As long as we have ignorant cadres in key positions and corruption prevails, President Ramaphosa’s SONA and the budget, which will undoubtedly be linked to it, mean nothing for South Africa’s future,” says Van Zyl.
A SONA should chart the course for the country’s future, affirm a vision, and purposefully outline what we will do to position the country better. Unfortunately, the entire South Africa knows, because it has been evident for years, that the ANC’s policy environment of cadre deployment and transformation will run every state institution into the ground. Citizens are already facing the calamitous consequences of the policy’s failure.
Will the lack of achievements be our fate once again?
TLU SA has no doubt about it.
Photo by Chris Ensminger on Unsplash
