South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa will deliver his State of the Nation Address today, February 9, 2023.
Ramaphosa is under intense pressure to convince the country and assure citizens that his government is addressing the nation’s dire electricity crisis and bleak economic outlook in his speech.
The President will deliver his annual speech from 7pm (17:00 GMT) before legislators, judges and Cabinet Ministers.
Ramaphosa will open a new session of Parliament in Cape Town as South Africa, the continent’s most developed economy, is faced with prolonged power cuts and high unemployment levels.
South Africans are forlorn at the state of a country battered by a stagnant economy, mounting crime, high unemployment rates, worsening inflation and water and electricity shortages.
The list of grievances is topped by the electricity crisis, which has forced the country’s 60 million people to endure up outages of up to 12 hours a day.
The high cost of food and fuel has also been cited as a major driver of the rising cost of living for the country’s Black majority.
South Africa has also seen widespread demonstrations by poor communities who charge the government has failed to deliver basic services like water, sanitation and housing.
The power blackouts have added to South Africa’s mounting economic woes, which include an unemployment rate of more than 30% including the loss of an estimated 2 million jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The South African economy is currently losing more than $56 million daily due to the ongoing power blackouts, Energy Minister, Gwede Mantashe, divulged at a mining conference in Cape Town this week.
Rolling power cuts of up to 8 hours per day are hitting homes, factories and businesses across the nation of 60 million.
The country’s power utility, Eskom is unable to produce adequate power due to frequent breakdowns at its aging coal-fired power stations and years of corruption.
Opposition party, Democratic Alliance leader, John Steenhuisen has disclosed that he does not expect much from Ramaphosa’s speech.
Delivering his party’s alternative state of the nation address earlier this week, Steenhuisen opined that “Nothing that President Ramaphosa says on Thursday will change this reality.”
“In fact, Ramaphosa is the one who has taken us down this path of failure over the last five wasted years, during which time this country has rapidly gone backwards on every conceivable metric.”
John Steenhuisen, Democratic Alliance leader
Meanwhile, the leftist opposition party, Economic Freedom Fighters has threatened to disrupt Ramaphosa’s address.
Cabinet To Be Reshuffled
Ramaphosa’s address comes ahead of an expected cabinet reshuffle following the resignation of Deputy President, David Mabuza and changes in the leadership of the ruling African National Congress party.
Ramaphosa is expected to appoint newly-elected ANC Deputy President, Paul Mashatile to replace Mabuza.
Ramaphosa, 70, came into office five years ago as a reformer promising a “new dawn” after the graft and scandal stained tenure of former President Jacob Zuma.
However, the record outages, which are wreaking havoc on the economy which is now expected to grow by a dismal 0.3 percent this year from 2.5 percent last year, have dented his reputation.
A government Minister estimated earlier this week that the power cuts are costing the economy a billion rand a day.
The current crisis is fading President Cyril Ramaphosa’s chances of securing a second term after next year’s elections.
Ann Bernstein of the Centre for Development and Enterprise, a South African think-tank’s iterated, “sadly, the notion of the current president as a reformer is no longer credible, in fact it is a mirage.”
In last year’s State of the Nation’s address, Ramaphosa promised that Eskom, the state electricity utility, would be “unbundled” by end of 2022, sadly, that is yet to happen.
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