President Cyril Ramaphosa prepares his State of the Nation Address. (Photo: Elmond Jiyane / GCIS) Speaking at the Cape Town City Hall on Thursday evening, President Cyril Ramaphosa mentioned “jobs” 17 times and “government” 29 times while mentioning poverty and crime a mere five times.
Jobs
“We have been taking extraordinary measures to enable businesses to grow and create jobs alongside expanded public employment and social protection. We all know that government does not create jobs. Business creates jobs,” said Ramaphosa during his State of the Nation Address.
Ramaphosa emphasised that when it comes to job creation – a term he used four times in his speech – the government’s role was merely to “create the conditions that will enable the private sector – both big and small – to emerge, to grow, to access new markets, to create new products, and to hire more employees”.
Ramaphosa also called on the private sector to support the government’s measures to provide employment, particularly for young inexperienced people. “We are calling on the private sector to support these measures – and, wherever possible, to drop experience as a hiring requirement – to give as many young people as possible their first job,” said Ramaphosa.
Government
The word “government” came up 29 times. Ramaphosa announced that Sipho Nkosi, chairperson of the Small Business Institute, will head a team in the Presidency that will cut red tape across government.
“The red tape team will identify priority reforms for the year ahead, including mechanisms to ensure government departments pay suppliers within the required 30 days,” said Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa also spoke about the report on the July unrest. “The report concludes that government’s initial handling of the July 2021 events was inept, police operational planning was poor, there was poor coordination between the state security and intelligence services, and police are not always embedded in the communities they serve,” said Ramaphosa.
State Capture
At the end of this month, the final part of the State Capture report will be released. The first two parts of the report which have been released confirm that there was indeed State Capture, said Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa’s speech mentioned “State Capture” 12 times.
Ramaphosa acknowledged that State Capture “had a direct and very concrete negative impact on the lives of all South Africans, but especially the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society. It has weakened the ability of the state to deliver services and to meet the expectations and constitutional rights of people”.
He said that people who have been found to be complicit in State Capture must be held accountable. To enable this, Ramaphosa said that discussions were under way with the judiciary for the creation of special court rolls for State Capture and corruption cases.
The words that were mentioned five times or less were linked to some of the country’s biggest issues: Transnet, Eskom, land reform, poverty and crime.
Other double digit mentions include:
- Electricity - 10
- Private Sector - 12
- Covid-19 - 15, and vaccines - 4
- Economy - 18
- Water - 19
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