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| President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers the 2024 State of The Nation Address at the Cape Town City Hall on 8 February 2024. (Photo: Shelley Christians via The Daily Maverick) |
In his State of the Nation Address (Sona), President Cyril Ramaphosa highlighted South Africa's achievements since the 1994 democratic transition through Tintswalo. This program has provided free healthcare, no-fee schools with feeding schemes, monthly social grants to 26 million South Africans, free tertiary education, employment equity, and black economic empowerment. Ramaphosa also announced the extension of the R350 Social Relief of Distress grant, which dates back to the COVID-19 lockdown, but did not give a date. The funding had already been extended to March 2025.
Ramaphosa also announced the implementation of the National Health Insurance, which he said would "incrementally implement" to deal with financing and more. He cited his administration's five-year administration as a time of recovery, rebuilding, and renewal, revitalising the economy after more than a decade of poor economic performance and rebuilding public institutions after the era of State Capture.
The Presidential Employment Stimulus and Youth Employment Programme have created more than 1.7 million work and livelihood opportunities and put more than one million assistants into classrooms. He emphasized the importance of far-reaching economic reforms, an ambitious investment drive, and an infrastructure programme starting to yield results. Companies continue to invest, thousands of hectares of farmland are being planted, new factories are being opened, and production is being expanded.
The opposition benches heckled, and the ANC applauded the electioneering Sona, signalling divisions ahead of the upcoming elections. The decision to deliver a Sona account of achievements not only in the past five years but going back to 1994 comes against the back of polls showing the ANC losing its majority in the elections.
Many of the stats presented during Thursday's Sona came from the five-year review the Presidency released earlier in the week. As with unemployment, Ramaphosa said, steps were being taken to rebuild institutions while ending corruption. Some 200 people were being prosecuted for State Capture, and R14 billion in forfeiture orders had been effected.
On the electricity front, regulatory reform would continue, and 14,000km of new transmission lines would be built. Elsewhere, plans were underway to resolve the freight and rail logistics crisis. Ramaphosa called for South Africans to stand together against attempts to undermine the progressive realisation of everyone's rights and against those who incite violence to divide South Africa and undermine democracy.
In ending the Sona of one hour and 40 minutes, Ramaphosa returned to Mandela, saying, "Like Madiba, we must keep moving, always forward, always onwards, towards the country of our dreams. Always believing that victory is certain."
