The Constitution’s preamble is clear. Looking back, it pays tribute to those who suffered for justice and honours those who worked to build South Africa, but it also sets out to:

“…heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights; lay the foundations for a democratic and open society in which government is based on the will of the people and every citizen is equally protected by law.”

Little, if any, of those fundamental constitutional democratic values emerged in Wednesday’s debate on the 2024 State of the Nation Address (Sona) that continued the first day’s one-upmanship.

It got weird at times. 

To prove his point about how the ANC-EFF-Patriotic Alliance coalition in Knysna was incompetent, the DA’s Western Cape premier, Alan Winde, went off script to talk about a body left decomposing in the town’s water reservoir for 14 days. “The arms fell off when they pulled the body out.”

Knysna is close to Winde’s heart — it was his constituency years ago. But Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu klapped back, saying that unlike the DA-run Tshwane where people had died of waterborne disease, at least people in Knysna got water. (Mchunu failed to acknowledge that some residents of Knysna have been without water for two months – Ed)

“I would have preferred the honourable premier would have talked about Tshwane,” Mchunu said.

The comments of Winde’s predecessor, Helen Zille (now the DA’s federal council chair) in 2012 that Eastern Cape learners were “refugees” continued to boomerang as many ANC speakers painted the DA as racist and elitist.

It was part of the electioneering that characterised the two-day Sona debate. 

‘I am Tintswalo’

DA Chief Whip Siviwe Gwarube slammed as a “revisionist and dishonest fairytale” and “an insult to those who know the truth” Ramaphosa’s Sona allegory of “democracy’s child” Tintswalo, who benefited from 30 years of ANC governance.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Opposition bays for blood in upcoming elections after Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation stump of a speech

But Justice Minister Ronald Lamola told Wednesday’s debate, “I am Tintswalo.”

Lamola, who was born of farmworker parents, said that without the ANC government’s tertiary student financing, “I would not be standing in front of you as a member of Parliament, an attorney of the High Court of South Africa having appeared in the highest court, the ICJ [International Court of Justice], on global affairs…”

Even the rather middle-aged home affairs minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, claimed to be Tintswalo, recounting how during his days as a medical doctor in the 1990s he performed caesarean sections without an anaesthetist. Today was better, said Motsoaledi: “You can’t hide the truth because truth is like liquor in your stomach. You can’t hide liquor in your stomach.”

Go figure.

In a curious twist, Deputy Higher Education Minister Buti Manamela blew balloons on to the speaker’s stage. “Will you please pick up your balloons before you address the house,” National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula ruled.

Paralysis and contradictions

Sometimes ministers, in their push to highlight achievements, instead opened a window on governance paralysis.

The critical skills visas that Ramaphosa mentioned in his 2022 Sona saw streamlined regulations published just before the 2024 Sona. Another example on Wednesday was Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande energetically proclaiming, “Minister of police, you will get your university for detectives now. We are ready now…”

However, it was during the 2020 Sona that Ramaphosa first announced this so-called detectives’ university at Hammanskraal, where the SAPS has a longstanding training college.

Sometimes ministers contradicted each other.

Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel, waxing lyrical about South African exports to West Africa to boost economic development there, said, “While the opposition gives speeches about climate change, we work to green the economy.”

But Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe had been insistent about coal during the previous day’s debate.

Going off his official script, Mantashe, also the ANC national chairperson, backed his party’s cadre deployment policy, which the Zondo Commission found to be illegal and unconstitutional.

“Cadre deployment has changed the reality where every DG [director-general] was a white man, where every judge was a white male, where every mayor was a white man… Run to court, do whatever… You will get your report, but we will continue to deploy people who are capable.”

His comments came a day after the Constitutional Court ordered the ANC to release to the DA within five days the cadre deployment committee minutes from January 2013. That committee was chaired by Ramaphosa for years.

Read more in Daily Maverick: The ANC government – not cadre deployment – is at the crux of SA’s corruption cancer

At times the ANC’s hammering home its 30 years of democratic delivery came unstuck. IFP National Council of Provinces delegate Nhlanhla Hadebe pointed out it was not the ANC, but IFP KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali who instituted antiretroviral therapy in SA, in 2002.

At the time, the national ANC government, headed by HIV/Aids denialist Thabo Mbeki, opposed the provision of the lifesaving drugs. The government only began providing nevirapine to halt mother-to-child transmission after the Treatment Action Campaign won a court action.

Ramaphosa closes the Sona debate on Thursday afternoon with his reply. DM