President prepares for annual boring gloss over the pig
President Cyril Ramaphosa will deliver his state of the nation address this week, and as has become custom it will be a boring affair. After all, South Africans are all too familiar with the state of the nation and the president’s attempt to apply gloss on it.
Ramaphosa will stand before parliament, and indirectly before the nation, trying to sell the idea that the big fat pig to which he will attempt to apply gloss isn’t actually a pig. But South Africans (including those who shout the loudest at ANC rallies) will know it’s the same old pig they wake up to every morning and will have to live with for many years to come.
The pig has grown so fat over the years that no amount of gloss can disguise it. Even if you aren’t looking for it, it makes itself visible. Take for example the gaping hole in government finances — not only at national level, but in the provinces and municipalities too.
Tax revenue collection is running behind the National Treasury projections, and the reason is obvious — the economy just isn’t growing fast enough. Businesses must make more money to pay more taxes; to pay more income taxes, workers must earn more. If consumers are to spend more (the generator of VAT) on goods and services, they must have more money in their pockets (or feel more confident about the future).
The slowdown in revenue collection will mean yet more cuts to government expenditure. Education and health, the two key public services the poor and lowincome earners depend on, will suffer most. The two services that are critical for the socioeconomic advancement of the children of the poor have already been casualties for more than a decade, meaning their quantum and quality have declined. And the slide is set to continue for years to come.
A few days ago health minister Joe Phaahla said the government couldn’t hire more newly qualified doctors because of budget cuts. The shortage of frontline healthcare workers is a pig that is all too familiar to the poor and the elderly, who are often one and the same. The majority of the elderly and poor in SA rely solely on public healthcare and spend many hours of their lives in queues at public hospitals or polishing the chairs in government hospital pharmacies waiting to receive their medication.
The poor also know only too well that public sector education is a pig, especially the variety commonly referred to as “no-fee” schools. The poor may not have to pay school fees, but their children will pay the price decades later because the effect of education budget cuts is that retiring teachers aren’t being replaced, meaning each remaining teacher in a “no-fee” school will have a larger class to teach.
Children who take longer than others to absorb lessons will simply be left behind. Many will drop out long before they reach high school, and for a variety of reasons others will not proceed beyond matric. As Stats SA data shows, these two groups bear the heaviest burden of unemployment, another pig Ramaphosa’s gloss won’t disguise.
He may attempt to show that employment has recovered to its pre-Covid level, but this will gloss over the fact that most of the recovery has disproportionately benefited semi-skilled and highly educated workers.
THE SHORTAGE OF FRONTLINE HEALTHCARE WORKERS IS A PIG ALL TOO FAMILIAR TO THE POOR AND THE ELDERLY
The morning after Ramaphosa’s attempt at makeup artistry, some South Africans will still be jumping over streams of raw sewage in their rush to get to jobs whose remuneration has barely kept up with the sprinting cost of living, if at all. Others will still have to wash their clothes and bodies in cold water because of power cuts. And ensuring access to a reliable flow of clean water is another failing of the big fat pig.
Most of those who have jobs will take a ride to work on minibuses that are not roadworthy and are driven too fast to be safe.
The commuter trains that were once a reliable transport service have all but disappeared because successive ANC administrations have sucked the public transport system dry.
However much Ramaphosa may try to convince us on Thursday that the pig isn’t a pig, South Africans know one when they see one — gloss or no gloss.