By Simon Nare
Opposition parties in the National Assembly have blasted President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address, calling him out for repeating the same empty promises he has made over the years.
During the SONA debate on Tuesday, MK Party Parliamentary leader Judge John Hlophe and EFF leader Julius Malema as well as other smaller parties tore into Ramaphosa’s speech, with some saying it lacked clarity and detail.
Even Government of National Unity partners did not speak glowingly on Ramaphosa’s speech, and at times DA and ANC MPs were at each other’s throats as though they were not coalition partners.
Malema said “the neoliberal right-wing coalition” has no credible economic plan or clear strategy to create jobs while more than 12 million people remained unemployed.
He added that the economy was stagnant and the nation was facing a crisis.
“President Cyril Ramaphosa stood before a joint sitting of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces on Thursday last week, addressing South Africans and the world, to deliver his eighth State of the Nation Address.
“Yet, he spoke as if it were his first ever SONA. There was no sense of accountability, no meaningful reporting and no acknowledgment of the economic crisis facing our people,” he said.
Malema said the president did not tell the nation what happened to the National Development Plan. He added that Ramaphosa did not say whether the plan was still the guiding policy of South Africa.
He said that president did acknowledge that the country has been governed without any clear, practical and guiding policy.
“Today, we have the Medium-Term Development Plan, but its direction and impact remain unclear — just another failed NDP,” he said.
Malema said in his maiden SONA back in 2018, Ramaphosa promised to focus on rebuilding, however, the situation had deteriorated.
He said the nation was dealing with a food crisis, unaffordable transport costs, soaring petrol prices and gender-based violence and femicide.
Hlophe, who spent more time heaping praise on MPK leader former president Jacob Zuma, who was in attendance, dismissed the address as nothing that was worthy of any dignified response.
“We now know that the objectives and goals of the NDP vision 2030 will not be achieved because the so-called Government of National Unity is directionless and does not have a common vision or does not have a vision at all.
“The so-called GNU is nothing but a grand coalition of the former liberators and historical but present oppressors, and the former liberators have joined the oppressors in the continued oppression of our people,” said Hlophe.
He added that any self-respecting human being knew that South Africa would not achieve even half of the objectives and goals set in the NDP because the coalition was full of self-contradictions.
Instead of defending the GNU, senior coalition partner and DA leader John Steenhuisen went to town bragging about how well party ministers were performing in their respective portfolios.
Steenhuisen said his party joined the GNU to help the country, and as part of its contribution it would be honest and explain why the country found itself in a crisis and the way out.
He said the truth was that the country under the ANC government persisted for too long with policies that failed.
He added the government kept bailing out state-owned enterprises and that had allowed the economy to crumble.
Steenhuisen also cited excessive regulations that made it harder for businesses to grow and employ people.
“And underpinning all of this, a thoroughgoing lack of accountability, where failure isn’t punished and success – like some of the recent reforms to network industries – is denounced for a lack of ideological purity.
“Worse still, in the face of this crisis, we have failed to respond with the urgency and determination required to make a clean break with the past, and start ourselves on a bold new path to success,” he said.
The debate on SONA continues on Wednesday and Ramaphosa is expected to reply on Thursday.
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