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President Cyril Ramaphosa promised an end to blackouts, more land for impoverished black communities and an overhaul of crumbling transport networks as he kicked off what is expected to be the closest-fought election since South Africa became a democracy three decades ago.
In his annual State of the Nation address at Cape Town’s parliament, Ramaphosa touted what he said were the African National Congress’s successes during its 30 years in power.
He used as a model the life of a fictitious “child of democracy” called Tintswalo, a Setswana name that roughly translates as “gratitude”. The child, he said, would have had access to basic rights denied to the vast majority of non-white citizens under apartheid, including to quality housing, education and healthcare.
“I do think he hit the right notes given the time the speech was given after 30 years of democracy,” said Wandile Sihlobo, an agricultural economist whose optimistic numbers on land redistribution Ramaphosa quoted. With an election so close, this was not the time to launch a clutch of new policies, Sihlobo said.
Geordin Hill-Lewis, the mayor of Cape Town for the opposition Democratic Alliance, described Ramaphosa’s speech as “a work of fiction”. He told the Financial Times: “South Africans know the truth of our country’s profound troubles. They live it every day.”
Tintswalo, the fictional child of democracy, faced a 70 per cent chance of being unemployed and a 50 per cent chance of living below the poverty line, the DA said.
Though Ramaphosa did not announce the date of the election, the country’s 27.5mn registered voters could head to the polls as early as May or as late as August.
A recent poll conducted for an opposition party showed the ANC dropping to 42 per cent — far below the 58 per cent it scored last time round. The same survey put the DA on 19 per cent and the radical Economic Freedom Fighters on 15 per cent.
If the ANC drops below 50 per cent, as many expect, it would have to seek a partner in what would be the first coalition government since the end of apartheid.
“There is a deep-seated frustration and a real lack of credibility because of his failure to deliver over the past six years since he’s been president,” Lawson Naidoo, executive secretary of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, said of Ramaphosa.
But Naidoo cautioned that polling was notoriously unreliable in South Africa, especially in a year that is seeing a plethora of new parties, and he predicted that the ANC might do better than predicted.
“The one thing the ANC proves over time is that their core voting base is resilient,” Naidoo said. “In the rural areas, their votes are pretty solid and very few other parties are able to reach those areas.”
Much of the voter apathy, reflected in consistently falling turnout, is down to anger at corruption, as well as chronic unemployment and decaying state infrastructure. In his 100-minute speech, the president said that a burst of private investment in electricity generation following regulatory reform would bring an end to power cuts, which occurred on 332 days in 2023.
“The worst is behind us and the end of load shedding is finally within reach,” he said. Government documents predict that blackouts will continue until 2030.
Ramaphosa sought to blame external forces, including the global financial crisis of 2008, the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for South Africa’s faltering economy. But he admitted that domestic corruption epitomised by a decade of “state capture” under his predecessor Jacob Zuma had also taken its toll.
“Effects of state capture continue to be felt — from crumbling rail network and poor performance of power stations,” he said, without mentioning that he had spent five years as Zuma’s deputy.
Although the chamber was quieter than in previous years, because of the suspension of EFF leader Julius Malema, opposition MPs heckled, shouting “Where were you?” and “What’s changed?”
Justice Malala, a prominent columnist, posted on social media platform X that he had suspected ahead of time that the speech “would be boring” because of the EFF leader’s exclusion from the chamber. “But Cyril Ramaphosa dug deep and brought his delusions and head-in-the-sand attitude,” he wrote.
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