What parties expect from the president

PRESSURE is mounting on President Cyril Ramaphosa to deliver a speech that will settle the markets, attract investments and fight corruption.

Opposition parties said yesterday that the country was at a crossroads and required decisive leadership to rescue it. They want the economy to grow above 1% to be able to create more jobs. Millions of people remain unemployed; Statistics SA said the unemployment rate was above 27%.

However, opposition parties said that despite mountains of evidence in various commissions of inquiry, Ramaphosa had not yet brought top ANC politicians to book.

The Right2Know Campaign said it wanted Ramaphosa to act on ministers implicated in wrongdoing.

DA leader Mmusi Maimane described state capture as the prosecution of the ANC.

Maimane said Ramaphosa had to use Sona to answer questions on the R500000 donated to him by Bosasa during his campaign to lead the ANC.

The DA leader also warned that state-owned entities (SOEs) were a risk to the economy.

Cope spokesperson Dennis Bloem said Ramaphosa should not make the markets jittery. He said the country needed foreign direct investment to ramp up the economy.

He said Ramaphosa should arrest politicians involved in corruption, and he had to clean the state.

ACDP leader Reverend Kenneth Meshoe also said Ramaphosa had to act against senior ANC politicians implicated in corruption.

He said Ramaphosa must demand that those implicated in corruption step down.

NFP MP Nhlanhla Khubisa said Ramaphosa had to fix SOEs because they contributed to the economy.

Ramaphosa said this week the government would not allow Eskom to fail.

Khubisa said the president had to deal with the problem of health and education as the systems were under pressure. But Khubisa said it was important that Ramaphosa addressed the questions of investors as the country needed foreign direct investment.