President Cyril Ramaphosa will deliver his State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Thursday, his first as leader of a Government of National Unity (GNU)-governed South Africa.
This triggers an opportunity to reflect on the GNU coalition's version of the state of the nation. For the first time, the country will know the GNU’s priorities beyond the tensions we have seen after the signing of the sixth administration's outstanding matters, notably the Bela Act, the NHI Act and the Expropriation Act.
Questions abound about how the GNU will translate the terms of the statement of intent signed after the May 2024 elections into actionable programmes. The focus will be on the non-negotiables from election manifestos that define the reason for being in the political power complex for participating parties in the GNU coalition.
Public policy is a translation of the governing party’s programme expressed through the power and monopoly of state resources. The outcome of the 2024 elections has changed governing party arrangements, and this Sona will be the first opportunity to see the depth and essence of the change.
As the leader of the GNU and a president elected by a hung parliament, Ramaphosa's aspirations for the current administration are anchored on his lived experience of the first GNU administration. He is tasked with navigating the delicate balance required to demonstrate that signing the sixth administration’s outstanding policy matters was a hygienic completion of the absolute majority to govern and not a tone for the remaining GNU co-governing period per the dictates of the reigning electoral mandate.
The seventh administration represents a national unity context sold to the investor community. It is already cited as the reason for the stabilising and positive sentiments that characterised the latest Davos parade of the country as a safe foreign direct investment destination.
South African traditional opposition politics, whose impulse has for a while been that of a state that managed the public sector-induced economy as an antidote to a supposedly non-transforming private sector one, is challenged to demonstrate the improving trust relationship between capital and the state. The resurgence of national economic interests as the basis of international relations and co-operation is an area of interest which has spurred the private sector to volunteer its resources to encourage a new wave of national unity.
A transition from a state that managed the economy for transformation objectives to one that focuses on working to propel private sector investment is under way. The interdependence of private sector economic objectives with the obligations of the state to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the economic transformation promises of a post-apartheid South Africa defines the new era.
What would then dominate the 2025 Sona given the historic moment of a National Dialogue precisely 70 years after the consequential Congress of the People in Kliptown, Soweto?
South Africa is out of its energy security woes as Eskom is marching comfortably to balance grid demands and the commitment to clean energy initiatives. The logistics network industry is in a planning phase that enjoys the nod of infrastructure investors from the local financial markets. The current efforts to intervene and prevent the closure of ArcelorMittal are because of its strategic importance in reigniting an industrialisation programme with the renewal of the rail network as a real domestic market.
The 2025 Sona is expected to be instructive to economic recovery and resuscitation of South Africa’s industrial prowess as a deserving member of the Brics and G20 community of nations.
Through its C-suites, which are growing into champions of sovereign, and not state, control of the economy, South Africa could be a model for the developing world.
The three-decade-long preoccupation with economic transformation that deindustrialised and grew the services industries, including a salary-driven growth path that saw a bulge in the public sector wage bill, has cost South Africa valuable time and momentum to build a new economic order in ways that limit competition for a low-to-no growth and jobs-decimating economy. The relevance, if not value, of the GNU will be evaluated in terms of how it broadens planning horizons and eschews jobless growth.
It will not be far-fetched for society to expect that the pressing problems of economic transformation to reflect the country’s demographics, race and class inequality, unemployment and unsustainable levels of a social grant-dependent society will not be solved by strengthening private sector discretion, euphemistically called the free market. The essence of freely electing public representatives is for them to preside over a capable and interventionist state on behalf of the voters, ‘we the people’, and impact our wellbeing.
The global trend indicates a world that is hard at work to introduce industrial policy frameworks based on government intervention and, in extreme cases, state-led capitalism to protect their economies from being consumerist. Industrialisation programmes that create local jobs have become a terrain of competitiveness.
A nationalist economic development wave is predominating large economies, and Trump’s US will be its most potent catalyst. India is poised to follow suit once it finalises its resources-based economic growth path. There is a growing trust relationship between the South Africa's C-Suites, which has improved the prospects of a patriotic intersectoral collaboration in the private sector. In-country value chains are expected to operate in a way that keeps the value of the country's resources. Through its C-suites, which are growing into champions of sovereign, and not state, control of the economy, South Africa could be a model for the developing world.
The current coalition arrangement's firmament of national unity introduces an era of consolidating elite economic power. The 2025 Sona should be about a policy framework facilitating sovereign thinking among the country’s cognitive, financial or other elites. In this Sona, the president should impress upon industry captains, holders of the national liquidity reserves and influencers of global FDI networks to move past the trust-deficit mentality.
He should call for releasing resources to pursue a new primacy for the economy in the global scheme of things. Through the medium of the National Dialogue, poised to sponsor a 1955 Freedom Charter standard national outcome, the private sector should renew its commitment to building an economic order that strengthens and advances the otherwise consolidating post-1994 democratic and constitutional order.
Dr FM Lucky Mathebula is a public policy analyst and the founder of The Thinc Foundation, a think-tank based in Tshwane. He is a TUT research and innovation associate.
For opinion and analysis consideration, email Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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