SONA SMILES AND SLAPS
Although President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plans to fight graft and help education have been welcomed, the unbundling of Eskom has unions up in arms.
Several significant calls and announcements were made during Thursday’s State of the Nation address.
These are the ones that stood out:
“Evidence of criminal activity that emerges must be evaluated by the criminal justice system. Where there is a basis to prosecute, prosecutions must follow swiftly and stolen public funds must be recovered urgently.
“To this end, we’ve agreed with the new national director of public prosecutions (NDPP) that there is an urgent need to establish, in the office of the NDPP, an investigating directorate dealing with serious corruption and associated offences;
“Eskom is in crisis and the risks it poses to South Africa are great. It could severely damage our economic, social development ambitions.
“The consequences may be painful, but they will be even more devastating if we delay. To bring credibility to the turnaround ... we shall immediately embark on a process of establishing three separate entities – generation, transmission, and distribution – under Eskom Holdings;
“We will give effect to our commitment to build human settlements in well-located areas that bring together economic opportunities and all the services and amenities that people need.
“The Housing Development Agency will construct an additional 500 000 housing units in the next five years, and an amount of R30 billion will be provided to municipalities and provinces to enable them to fulfil their respective mandates;”
“In a few months’ time, South Africans will go to the polls for the sixth time in our democracy to vote for national and provincial governments. I’ve engaged with the Independent Electoral Commission and also with the premiers of all provinces and intend to proclaim May 8, 2019 as the date of the election;
“Above everything else, we must get our economy working again. I call upon every South African to make this cause your own. Because when we succeed – and of this we are certain – it is the entire nation that’ll benefit; and
“We conducted an audit last year and found that nearly 4 000 schools still have inappropriate sanitation facilities. We have launched the SAFE Initiative in August last year, through which we mobilised all available resources to replace all unsafe toilets in public schools.” –