Some urgency, little credibility, plus five highlights from 'Vrye Weekblad'

The 2021 State of the Nation Address by President Cyril Ramaphosa was a subdued affair without much ceremony, writes Max du Preez in today’s issue of Vrye Weekblad.

It could have been brilliant and inspiring — if his government’s credibility in respect of delivering on its promises hadn’t been so bad; if we couldn’t remember that he said more or less the same thing last year and the year before; and if we’d been able to forget for a moment that he was also the president of the ruling party, a party that is increasingly devouring itself.

And yet many South Africans listened to the president on Thursday evening and said: Can you imagine what we would have looked like now, what we might have had to listen to now, if Ramaphosa lost the ANC leadership election three years ago?

I heard a new sense of urgency, a new realism, a new focus. More acknowledgment for the private sector as a job creator, more honesty about the collapse of local authorities, actual plans to licence new electricity suppliers in the near future and attract investors to take over some of Eskom’s plants.

But then the scepticism got the upper hand again.

This is the same government that neglected to order vaccine in time and is now flailing.

This is the government that in the past 11 months caused unnecessary damage to the economy through misguided lockdown regulations such as the tobacco ban, and the ban on e-commerce and the export of wine.

This is the government under whose nose about R35bn was looted by PPE tenderpreneurs.

This is the government that a few months ago had to be ordered by a court to feed schoolchildren, which recently unleashed water cannons at old and disabled people who had waited for social grants for days.

Read more about the State of the Nation Address and more news and analysis in this week's issue of Vrye Weekblad.

Must-read articles in this week's Vrye Weekblad

>> Browse the full February 12 edition

SHILOWA'S WISDOMS | A decade has passed since he left party politics. Anneliese Burgess talks to the former deputy president of the breakaway party Cope about why politics hasn’t left him.

ANC ABOVE ALL ELSE | Recent evidence before the Zondo commission simply confirmed the prevalence of a kind of democratic centralism, and that compromise can only contain the inevitable violence, not resolve political quarrels, writes Piet Croukamp.

FREE TO READ — COVID Q&A | Does SA have a vaccine plan? How have the new variants changed the playing field, and will the virus always be with us? We try to answer these and other questions about the pandemic.

ONWARDS TO IMPEACHMENT | While Democrats in the US Senate claim that Donald Trump was the inciter-in-chief of a bloody uprising, Republican senators are fighting for their political survival.

FREE TO READ — A LIFE OF LIGHT | Her life has been one big question, writes Terry Ann Adams, author of Those Who Live in Cages. But a life of doubt and anxiety has also brought new experiences.