EFF must believe South Africans are fools for promises

There is no greater despair than when words lose meaning.

Consistent lies, empty promises, and a profound disrespect for audiences is often the reason for this.

When these words which have a real effect on people’s lives come from political figures, the despair, and its consequences compound.

For one thing the markets do not entertain lying presidents. While lies and phantom achievements may garner some votes, the markets are not so gullible.

They quickly adjust and allocate a measure of credibility that closely reflects how believable a person is based on their track record.

This allocated credibility becomes a deciding factor when the investors decide whether to invest in an economy.

Where the government has little credibility, like here, there is little appetite among investors to expose their hardearned cash to that much risk.

Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address failed to reflect reality or even inspire hope that some credible future reality is at hand.

Considering his many unfulfilled promises, Ramaphosa only demonstrated his profound inability to act decisively.

His words have lost credibility and, as a result, his leadership has also lost credibility.

Despite his attempts to cloak the shortfalls of his tenure and the ANC’S incumbency with words, those very words, in their eternal patience, have exposed him.

His inability to make his words come true is a significant reflection of his ineffectiveness as a leader.

Economist Iraj Abedian said: “The capital markets have no iota of trust in what the government says.

“It he was wise he would begin his speech not with dramatic poetry but with a very simple sentence: ‘I and my government are absolutely aware that we have over the past 13 years consistently overpromised and under-delivered on key elements of macroeconomic policy and fiscal management. We are suffering from a credit deficit and we are committed to turn this around.’”

Abedian, who also chairs Pan-african Capital Holdings, was commenting on what finance minister Enoch Godongwana needs to say when he presents his budget speech.

If Godongwana even comes close to expressing these sentiments, he will be presenting the exact opposite of what the president said during the Sona.

Godongwana could save the day by presenting a straightforward and brutally realistic budget speech.

This might save the president’s bacon if the budget speech manages to be believable, even by a small margin.

However, Godongwana, like many politicians, has his own credibility issues to contend with.

He has previously identified a number of decisions that he would rather not make based on reality, yet he went right ahead and made them.

This makes it clear that his decisions are not made to address our economic reality, but to pander to the ANC’S political considerations.

Godongwana initially said the NHI is not affordable, an economic consideration, but later went ahead with it.

He initially said the salary increase for civil servants was unaffordable before forking out an unbudgeted 7,5% increase last year.

While many supporters of democracy seem to accept that electioneering season is free game for lies and empty promises, this attitude does immense damage to the meaning words, the credibility of our politics, and our incredibly populist politicians.

It is unclear why South African politicians think they can continue to flog the dead horse of empty promises. It signals liberal amounts of disrespect for the electorate.

“This is not a manifesto of promises, it’s a manifesto of commitments,” said the very loud Julius Malema as he promised heaven and earth to his supporters.

Among the promises the loud one made was an end to load shedding in six months. The ANC is also very fond of this one having promised an end to load shedding several times already.

Last year electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa assured the nation that loadshedding would be history before year end. Malema also promised millions of jobs.

This one is also a fond one for the ruling party.

The president promised to create jobs across different sectors during the Sona.

Malema promised to increase social grants, an area the ANC has strategically monopolised to collect votes from the poor and marginalised.

The EFF has decided to use a turbo charged version of the ANC’S empty promises election strategy.

It makes similar promises to the ANC but just more outrageous. The EFF must really believe that South Africans are fools for promises.

If the ANC failed to do less than a quarter of what the EFF promises, how credible is the EFF and its promises?

How will we mitigate the inevitable despair that follows empty words?