Lerato Mbhiza and Johnathan Paoli
Trade union federation Cosatu has praised President Cyril Ramaphosa as one of the most accessible presidents – open to both workers and business – but tragically “too soft” on those implicated in corruption.
Speaking to Inside Politics ahead of the president’s State of the Nation Address on Thursday, Cosatu spokesperson Matthew Parks said with unemployment at 41% and youth unemployment at 60%, it expects the president to respond during Sona, with a clear set of specific interventions and time frames to turn things around.
“What we need to see emerging from the State of the Nation Address is a sense that the government understands the challenges and has clear plans to turn them around, and a real sense of time-frames and accountability. What we can’t afford is a business-as-usual approach with mere shopping lists,” Matthews said.
Despite the challenges, the union federation praised the National Minimum Wage increase of 8.5% from R25.42 to R27.58 per hour for domestic and farm workers.
In terms of load shedding, Parks said the problem of load shedding started in 2006 and that the country reached its lowest point early last year, with twelve hours of outages.
However, Parks said the government has made progress with reduced severity of black-outs and that more must be done in order to provide better support to the state utility in order to help end load shedding, specifically getting new generation capacity up and running and on the grid.
“Unbundling Eskom will not help, it will just weaken the SOE even more…changing from one Eskom to three Eskoms wont help the situation,” Parks warned.
In relation to NSFAS – the student funding scheme, Parks said the government is moving too slowly in dealing with the problems, but did not lay the blame solely on Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande, rather outlining it as a system issue.
But he admitted that the lived experience of students remained horrible, saying more external oversight and auditing was required from entities such as SARS and the SIU.
The president should not simply deliver a “shopping list” of empty promises, but solid commitments with specific time-frames, Cosatu said.
Parks added that Ramaphosa did well by having 19 million South Africans who are now recipients of the SRD grant.
He also praised Ramaphosa for removing “some” ringleaders and implicated members of middle management from the Zuma years but called for stringent measures to combat the scourge of corruption in the country.
Despite celebrating what the president has achieved, Parks said that the union nevertheless remained frustrated by the pace at which the country’s numerous socio-economic challenges are being resolved.
“We must acknowledge real progress has been made by the government and society since the last Sona, including reducing the unemployment rate by 5%, significant progress in less load shedding and a debt relief package for Eskom,” the spokesperson said.
INSIDE POLITICS
