President Cyril Ramaphosa did his best during SONA 2024 to paint a a rosy picture of progress made during his first term in office.
It’s hard not to read into the symbolism of the State of the Nation Address taking place at Cape Town City Hall for the third time since a devastating fire destroyed the National Assembly in January 2022, as the country prepares to mark 30 years of democracy in April. The historic building remains derelict, with reconstruction only expected to be done by 2025.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s first SONA was built on the ideology of rebuilding our broken state, hammered by years of mismanagement and corruption under the auspices of then-president Jacob Zuma. But as my colleague Pieter du Toit wrote in his column this week, six years after Zuma, Ramaphosa has very little to offer. Any promises of rebuilding he made have withered. Much like what has happened to our parliamentary building.
With the country staggering along under the challenges of continuing corruption, mismanagement, crime, unemployment, crumbling infrastructure and poor service delivery, Ramaphosa had a hard sell on Thursday night to convince South Africans that the country is finally on the right track.
