Oratorically speaking, Sona is so very nah

This Thursday evening President Cyril Ramaphosa will deliver his ninth State of the Nation Address. Please try to stifle your yawns. Sona hasn’t been destination viewing since Julius Malema’s mob were rampaging around Jacob Zuma, provoking white-shirted bouncers and illegal cellphone signal jamming by the security agencies.

This is unlikely to be a landmark Sona in terms of content.

There have been a few of those, with FW de Klerk’s watershed unbanning of the ANC on 2 February 1990 as the Big Daddy of them all, followed by Nelson Mandela’s debut for the new democracy in 1994 (“Let us all get down to work”) and Ramaphosa’s “Thuma Mina” performance in 2018. Last year’s, as the first from a coalition government, also felt significant.

Ramaphosa’s speech this year will probably wash down the drain of history very fast while the media chatters about MPs’ fashion sense (or complete lack of it; remember Malusi Gigaba’s SAA pilot outfit in 2014?) and we find out whether the SANDF can get it together to do a decent 21-gun salute without injuring themselves, running out of ammunition or employing the Iranians to do it for them.

Capetonians, meanwhile, will only be focused on furious grumbling about the traffic gridlock caused by the whole circus.

In truth, Ramaphosa is not a gifted orator and he clearly lacks anything resembling a gifted speechwriter on his staff. His Sonas are formulaic in structure, content and rhetorical flourishes. And they have the feel of a Cabinet dump – each department having their own section – with no real coherence or sense of priorities or relevance.

Undeniably though, in this regard, Cyril is a big step up from Zuma, who was totally disconnected from the words he spoke at Sona. And those words were totally disconnected from the reality of the country or the unruly chaos that was often unfolding on the floor of the House in front of him.

2017

Cyril’s best Sona by far was his first in 2018. After the event was delayed a week while he shoved Zuma out of office, Ramaphosa did his “Send Me” thing, promising a “New Dawn” and addressing our realities with refreshing realism. The speech was relatively short and sharp.

2018

Since then, a clear (and unimpactful) pattern has emerged.

He always begins, as they all do, with the stupefying All Protocol Observed dance. Last year, he dutifully and slowly welcomed 16 different people or groups before he addressed his “fellow South Africans”. Not exactly an attention grabber at the start and, symbolically, putting us in our place at the end of the queue behind the VIPs.

He then goes into, what he likes to think is, soaring optimism, usually invoking Mandela and often using the word “dream”. A fictional creation, like Tintswalo (“Democracy’s Child”) from 2024, may make an appearance. He is fond of pointing out that the clothing he is wearing is made in SA – his suit, shirt, tie and shoes have all been referenced in the past.

He is relentlessly upbeat and lists his government’s achievements, which for many of his Sona years has proved quite a challenge.

2019

2022

2023

This year, the President does have more than usual to boast about on the achievements front, but the venue in which he will speak remains a monument to his administration’s expensive incompetence. He will, yet again, deliver Sona in the Cape Town City Hall, since Parliament is still not near to completing its R4-billion (and counting) rebuild from the fire four years ago.

2024

After the positivism, the President then addresses our problems. And, following a re-read of all of these speeches (the things I do for you!), I must acknowledge he always does this bluntly. Down the years he has, in very plain language, laid out serious issues with the economy, poverty, crime, GBV, corruption, municipalities, infrastructure decay and water security, among others.

He then launches into the remedies for our woes, all of which involve glaze-over monopoly numbers of billions here and billions there. It is noticeable that almost every year he has expensively committed to more police, which has produced little because the vrot at the top of the force, currently being revealed at the Madlanga Commission, is so deep.

Every year, without fail, he has mentioned the NHI – “the time has now arrived to finally implement universal health coverage through the National Health Insurance” he said in 2018! That can of worms will be kicked even further down the road again on Thursday.

Ramaphosa’s Sona remedies always involve Capital Letters. Last year, he was big on the National Dialogue, which is now a dead horse he might try to flog back into life this week. Prior to that, we have been promised many Presidential Summits, Commissions and Advisory Panels. He is fond of New Social Compacts (preferably Comprehensive ones) and, at some point, The Fourth Industrial Revolution gets a mention. And he always has plans like the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan and the National Strategic Plan and he often has Master Plans – for the Mining, Steel and Clothing industries.

He has never acknowledged the blatantly obvious fact that most of what he had promised the year before had never borne any substantive fruit. He hopes that we have forgotten what he said 12 months before and, in truth, most of us have.

He also at some point cannot resist veering into hopeless over-promise.

The classic example is 2019, when he claimed that, by 2029, no person in South Africa would go hungry, violent crime would be halved if not eliminated and (stop laughing) “bullet trains pass through Johannesburg as they travel from here to Musina, and they stop in Buffalo City on their way from eThekwini back here in Cape Town”.

And there are plenty of other pipe dreams:

• He has often talked dreamily about a new smart city, ostensibly in Lenasia, founded (inevitably) “on the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution”;
• In 2023, he announced a Hydrogen Society Roadmap to produce a green hydrogen pipeline worth about R270-billion. How is that going?;
• Did we ever get the R1.2-trillion in foreign investment we were promised in 2018 would arrive by 2023?; and
• Most damningly, in 2021 he said it was his responsibility to ensure that the Zondo Commission Report was acted upon. Zondo himself leads the pack in wondering when he will ever deliver on that.

Having pledged billions and outlined worthy, wordy plans and gone on for far too long, the President usually winds up to the finish line with an uplifting quotation; Maya Angelou, Joseph Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Sol Plaatje, Ben Okri and Hugh Masakela have all cracked that closing nod in the past.

As has Madiba, several times. DM

2020