New projects are no compensation for a lack of maintenance over the last 25 years
President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers his 2023 state of the nation address in Cape Town on February 9 2023. Picture: ESA ALEXANDER/Reuters
In other words, the delivery was decisive and clear, almost authoritative. Tone counts for a large portion of how a speech lands, and the president struck a useful combination of being emphatic and empathetic. He was emphatic that no-one should be left behind, and empathetic towards the fact that we are living within a complex set of crises.
That subtly suggests that the very governing party over which the president presides somehow had no role to play in the poor governance decisions that exacerbated the socioeconomic devastation caused by Covid-19, or in the malfeasance that created the current electricity crisis. The pandemic did not create the loss of 2-million jobs: poor governance responses, especially declaring a state of disaster and shutting down the economy unnecessarily in many cases, cost us 2-million jobs.
In his speech the president declared another state of disaster, over which the co-operative governance and traditional affairs minister will preside. Leaders are often fatally attracted to silver bullet solutions that end up creating more problems than they solve. It seems likely that this is one of those instances. A state of disaster is typically disastrous for democratic accountability, and declaring one the governance problems that created the problem go away.
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