There were mixed responses to this year's state of the nation address

Trade unions:

Zuma honest about problems:

Trade unions praised President Jacob Zuma on Thursday for what they described as his honesty and frankness on the problems South Africa faced.

"It was good to hear the president admitting that municipal service delivery is still not on a desirable level," Solidarity deputy general secretary Dirk Hermann said.

However, Solidarity was disappointed that Zuma did not provide solutions.

"With regard to crime, skills shortages and the pressure that is put on the rights of minorities in South Africa, President Zuma did not bring forward any significant new solutions," said Hermann.

The union also welcomed Zuma's plan to invest in big infrastructure projects, but was worried about the emphasis on empowerment instead of development through education.

The Food and Allied Workers' Union (Fawu) said Zuma's address was "inspiring".

"President JG Zuma... [was] frank about current challenges, especially the triple challenge of unemployment, poverty and inequalities," the union said in a statement.

Fawu welcomed job creation being the focus of the massive infrastructure development plan.

"We still wish to see much more focused and deeper plans on the creation of green jobs, and the agro-processing sector becoming one of the job drivers."

Sapa

DA parliamentary leader

Zuma plan's funding a mystery:

Where the money is going to come from to fund President Jacob Zuma's newly-announced giant infrastructure plan is a mystery, says DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko.

Speaking on Thursday after the president's state-of-the-nation address, she said the Democratic Alliance estimated the fiscus was R300 billion shy of what it needed to fund the five massive projects Zuma announced.

"It's very ambitious. My shadow finance minister tells me it's about R300 billion short. How it's going to be funded is a mystery.

"It's a very big laundry list. It pleased a lot of the provincial premiers.

"It's politically beneficial for the president, but the public sector wage bill is so high it's just not clear where the money is going to come from. Pravin Gordhan is going to have to tell us that."

Mazibuko suggested Gordhan was going to have to make some major "shifts" in the country's Budget, which he will table on February 22, to accommodate the plan.

In his address, Zuma called on South Africans to join in a "massive" infrastructure development plan aimed at pegging back unemployment and poverty.

"We will use the project management expertise gained during the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup to make this project a success," he said.

The plan would be driven and overseen by the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission (PICC), established last September.

"We have chosen five major geographically-focused programmes, as well as projects focusing on health and basic education infrastructure, information and communication technologies and regional integration."

Zuma said the massive investment in infrastructure would "industrialise" the country.

Mazibuko said it was disappointing that the focus was on state-led infrastructure development which was supposed to stimulate growth.

"He didn't talk about the private sector and we believe this is an integral part of our economic machinery."

On Zuma's repeating his party's views on land reform, including that the pace of this was too slow and that the willing-buyer-willing-seller option was not working, Mazibuko said the president had been "playing for the gallery".

She said his remarks had absolutely no grounding in economic reality.

"He talks about the willing-buyer-willing-seller model failing, with no reference to fact that the failure is due to the lack of capacity in the department of rural development and land reform to assess land value."

Sapa

 Deputy CEO of AfriForum, Alana Bailey

Zuma address lacks focus on quality education

President's State of the Nation Address lacks focus on quality education; remarks on land reform raise concerns

AfriForum welcomes President Jacob Zuma's emphasis on job creation and the improvement of infrastructure, but is of the opinion that it does not help to focus on the creation of employment if the quality of education at school level is of such a nature that it does not produce employable people.

According to Alana Bailey, Deputy CEO of AfriForum, the annual national assessment (ANA) of 2011 revealed that 70% of the country's learners could not achieve the expected levels of literacy and numeracy. The President mentioned that the matric pass rate is increasing, but this does not reassure either, as experts expressed serious doubts about the 2011 matriculants' levels of competency in these fields as well.

In his address, the President referred to better school attendance figures in 2011, but as long as approximately 80% of the schools in the country remain dysfunctional, attendance alone is insufficient to ensure that the attendees of today will be the competitive and successful workforce of tomorrow. According to Bailey, fully functional schools and high quality education - in the mother language of learners for as long as possible at school level - are of crucial importance for the eradication of the three major challenges facing South Africa, as identified by President Zuma, namely unemployment, poverty and inequality.

As the President did not accept adequate responsibility for the education crisis in the country and did not announce significant measures to address the problem, he equally handled the issue of land redistribution with a disappointing lack of accountability. Once again it was stated that the principle of willing buyer, willing seller has not been the best way to address the issue, thereby laying the blame for the failure of land redistribution at the door of farmers. It is an invalid assumption that fails to take the State's bureaucratic mismanagement and corruption into account.

Bailey mentions that the promotion of quality education and strong opposition against the Green Paper on Land Reform will be key focuses of AfriForum this year. "The President's State of the Nation Address once again proves the importance of communities becoming involved in the activities of civil rights initiatives such as AfriForum that tackle these problems head on. Issues that have direct bearing on our future cannot simply be left in the hands of politicians," she said.