I will be live-tweeting President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address tonight, and I hope that there will be no mischievous signal jamming by the state security machinery. Instead of sitting with other invited guests in the National Assembly Chamber, I will be commenting and analyzing the speech from the SABC radio makeshift studios facing the steps of Parliament.
For those of you not on Twitter, or dizzied by the blizzard of Zuma-related tweets, here’s what I expect to hear from the president in the midst of threatened interruptions from opposition parties demanding a public apology for the manner in which former Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene was unexpectedly fired in December last year.
This year I expect Zuma’s ninth state of the nation address to demonstrate his decisive leadership that political and economic commentators have been calling for since he assumed office by presenting a short list of concrete plans that will restore public confidence in all spheres of government as well as investor confidence in the country’s economy.
Whether the plans are presented more in the form of a campaign agenda than an annual programme for government doesn’t matter to me. As long as they are addressing concerns of ordinary South Africans trapped in an economic slowdown, I will applaud.
This is an election year for local government after all. Even though Zuma will not be on the ballot himself, his claim to the Union Building will also be under test as local government elections have strong features of provincial and national elections; they are held on the same day and the results are announced under one roof.
Therefore, I expect the president to use the opportunity to spell out what the country must do collectively under this administration to deal with high unemployment, poverty, and income inequality.
This is a decisive moment in the second term of a president with whom South Africans have a love-tolerate relationship and who has been bold to declare that the ANC will govern until Jesus comes back. It is the pivot point where the president gets yet another opportunity to transition from being a cheerleader to a priority setter in the contest for creating a legacy of a country that represents a maturing democracy and that is alive with possibilities.
There is a prevailing atmosphere of uncertainty across economic sectors because of the increase risk of a downgrade of the country’s credit status.
There are many inside the country and abroad who hope this speech and the budget speech that will follow later in the month offer a unique opportunity to take the nation into confidence ahead of the election campaign roadshows that will see politicians interacting with ordinary voters on a large scale.
As such the resonance of this speech will be judged by the extent to which it succeeds to pave way for private investment capital to revitalize industry and create decent jobs.
The speech will also be judged by the extent to which it allows SA to respond with speed to existing and future opportunities to realise its economic potential as one of the biggest economies in the continent. Nothing short of concrete plans can rebut negative narratives emerging from projected economic hardships ahead of us.
The tone of the speech must also be mindful of the demographics of the audience the president will be addressing at this critical juncture for SA. Generally, there are signs of an increasing segment of unique voters who, when assessing the effectiveness of the speech in providing decisive leadership, do so without inhibition by political party affiliation.
Some hold swing or floating political allegiance, and are likely approve or disapprove the president’s message based on its depth in the way it addresses the pressing problems facing our country.
Concrete plans are also uniquely important at this time in Zuma’s presidency because they can be a rallying point as the nation exercises solidarity to avert full scale economic depression in the face of a devastating drought, weak currency, and mounting public debt.
It is through decisive leadership at all levels that the country can muster the required national solidarity, sacrifice, and resilience across economic sectors that will take us out of the doldrums.
While Zuma’s speech has been preceded with consultations with big businesses to address concerns about the possible downgrading of the country’s rating to junk status, there are concerns that broader civil society formations have been left out of the loop. Also, it appears that discussions between government and organised labour have been limited.
Yet these social partners will play an important role in ensuring traction of the issues that the speech is expected to present. Given the likelihood of service delivery protests and stop-start spending patterns by some municipalities during an election year, the president is expected to outline concrete measures in place to address tensions in local communities.
There is a prevailing atmosphere of uncertainty across economic sectors because of the increase risk of a downgrade of the country’s credit status. Such a downgrade threatens to hike the local cost of debt, could result in foreign money invested in state and corporate bonds exiting the country and push the rand further to a historic low.
The more South Africans hear and think about the situation, the more they are likely to experience a great deal of uneasiness about what potentially lies ahead. If the state’s credit ratings are downgraded, the banks would inevitably be downgraded too, as would major corporations that raise debt through bonds.
The speech must therefore open space for more social partners to make a meaningful contribution towards economic recovery especially in the face of the recent move by the World Bank to slash its forecast for local growth this year to 0.8%, joining the International Monetary Fund and the SA Reserve Bank, which cut their growth ¬ forecasts to 0.7% and 0.9%, respectively.
Every sentence in Zuma’s speech will be evaluated based on whether it goes far enough to create conditions that prevent the economic slide from reaching lowest forecast among local economists for growth this year of just 0.2%. We wait in anticipation.
Nkosikhulule Xhawulengweni Nyembezi is a Researcher, Policy Analyst, Human Rights Activist; Board Chairperson: Election Monitoring Network; Co-Chairperson: Elections 2016 National Co-ordinating Forum
– By Nkosikhulule Xhawulengweni Nyembezi
