By Thapelo Molefe
The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) has rejected President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 2026 State of the Nation Address, saying it was a costly event that failed to confront rising poverty, unemployment and deteriorating public services.
In a statement issued on Friday, Nehawu said the Thursday night address was a “R7 million spectacle” that has become “a platform for carefully crafted rhetoric and unrealistic target setting”.
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“The President’s utterance about the Social Relief of Distress grant lifting people out of poverty is incorrect,” Nehawu said.
Citing national poverty data, the union said 30.3 million South Africans, representing 55.5% of the population, live below the upper bound poverty line, while 13.8 million experience food poverty. It accused Ramaphosa of failing to provide certainty on the future of the SRD grant and of reneging on commitments to expand it into a universal income guarantee.
“The President failed to use this opportunity to relay the annual fear of SRD recipients on the security and future of the grant, despite his promises,” the union said.
Nehawu also criticised plans to reconfigure the SRD into a “job seekers” grant, describing it as a policy adopted through the Democratic Alliance and inappropriate in the context of the country’s unemployment crisis, particularly among young people.
On local government, the union argued that the President’s speech did not reflect resolutions taken at the ANC’s January 2026 Lekgotla, including commitments to implement a Local Government Action Plan anchored in the District Development Model.
“Most of our municipalities are crumbling and now face incremental and dangerous climatic disasters, floods and fires,” Nehawu said, urging the inclusion of a climate resilient local government system in the forthcoming White Paper on Local Government.
The union further questioned progress on infrastructure spending announced in 2025, when Ramaphosa committed that “Government will spend more than R940 billion on infrastructure over the next three years.”
“What we were presented with is the complete privatisation of the remaining public entities through concessionary private sector deals in the rail, port, electricity and water sectors,” Nehawu said.
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It added that “endless task teams and endless commitments” to address the water crisis mirror pronouncements made in 2025, with limited evidence of implementation.
In the health sector, Nehawu said several commitments made during the 2025 SONA remain “unaccounted for”, including the establishment of the first phase of a single electronic health record and the creation of ministerial advisory committees on health technologies and healthcare benefits.
While acknowledging ongoing hospital construction and revitalisation projects in Limpopo, Free State, Eastern Cape and North West, the union warned that the National Department of Health lacks “a properly funded and effective System Strengthening programme aligned to the framework of the WHO’s building blocks”.
The union also raised concerns about rising malnutrition among children, increasing school dropouts and more than 100,000 matriculants from the class of 2025 who have not secured placement in higher education institutions.
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Although Nehawu noted the President’s announcement that members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) would be deployed to assist police in Gauteng and the Western Cape, it said the intervention “may curb criminal activities in our communities in the short term” but “does not address the root socio- economic and psycho social conditions that nurture illegal and criminal activities”.
“SONA is dislocated from many of the realities faced by workers and our communities,” the union said, adding that the true test of the President’s commitments will come when the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement is tabled later this year.
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