Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
Opposition unimpressed with SONA
The unemployment rate is still a major problem in the country, according to opposition parties. Glenneis Kriel reports.
President Cyril Ramaphosa gave an overview of strides made by the ANC in changing people’s lives since the start of democracy 30 years ago during his recent State of the Nation Address (SONA) in Cape Town.
Highlights for agriculture included that roughly 25% of farmland was now in black ownership, leaving the country on track to exceed the 30% target for 2030; the announcement that a Climate Change Response Fund would be launched to address the persistent effects of global warming; and that government was taking action to improve ports and the rail network and restore them to world-class standards. With all the interventions in the energy sector, Ramaphosa said he believed the end of load-shedding was in sight. To prevent a similar crisis, he said the energy sector was being transformed to become more competitive, reliable and sustainable.
However, the address was not well received by opposition political parties, as was evident from the debate on SONA that followed in Parliament.
Velenkosini Hlabisa, president of the IFP, said that the president could not point to 1994 as a measure of how far South Africa had come under an ANC government, as the ANC did not govern the country alone between 1994 and 2004.
“The strong and stable democracy that was built from 1994 to 2004 was built by a government of national unity, and in which the IFP served.
“It was only when the ANC gained unfettered power that governance began to falter,” he said. Hlabisa said the president lamented that the global financial crisis brought an end to a decade of strong growth, but did not mention that a decade after the global financial crisis, and even before COVID-19 occurred, South Africa’s economy was still stagnant at a growth rate of just 0,26%.
“We had nine wasted years under the ANC [under Zuma], which worsened when Ramaphosa took office. Over the past eight years, the rand weakened from R11,55 to the US dollar to R18,63, and foreign investors dumped stocks to the tune of R990 billion.”
Hlabisa said that unemployment decreased year-on-year under the government of national unity, but leapt by a staggering 15% over the 20 years that the ANC had been in power.
Similarly, the crime rate had decreased for eight out of 10 years under the national unity government, but had increased 23% by 2021 since the ANC took power.
John Steenhuisen, leader of the DA, said in a press statement that the current five-year term, which would come to an end after the general election, would be remembered as a period in which South Africa had regressed across every single metric into a state of decay and decline that only exacerbated inequality, placed millions more in the unemployment queue, and took our country backwards.
“The president is out of touch with the plight of ordinary South Africans. The economy has all but flatlined, there are no new jobs, corruption is worse than it has ever been, crime is spiralling out of control, and millions of our children are starving to death.”
According to Steenhuisen, none of the promises made by the president in his previous five SONA speeches materialised, and not a single piece of pragmatic, workable legislation had been tabled at the National Assembly to realise Ramaphosa’s ‘New Dawn’.
In addition, none of the offerings were workable in the financial framework of a 6% budget deficit.
Dr Pieter Groenewald, leader of the Freedom Front Plus, highlighted the way in which South Africa had declined under Ramaphosa.
“Since Ramaphosa became president in 2018, the economic growth rate declined from 1,3% to 0,9%.
“The Johannesburg Stock Exchange showed a loss of 22% against the American dollar over a period of six years, whereas the New York Nasdaq 100 grew by 147% and the S&P 500 by 75% over this time.”
He pointed out that the unemployment rate increased from 24% six years ago to 32% now, while the youth unemployment rate increased from 20% to 64% over this time. The murder rate, over this time, increased from 35 out of 100 000 of the population to 45.
‘THE ECONOMY HAS ALL BUT FLATLINED, CORRUPTION IS WORSE THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN, AND CRIME IS SPIRALLING OUT OF CONTROL’