Break neoliberalism’s hold — SA demands rupture, not just reform

As Cyril Ramaphosa prepares to deliver the State of the Nation Address on Thursday, 11 February, the ritual begins anew. Business leaders will call for “confidence”. Ratings agencies will demand “discipline”. Trade union federations and NGOs will submit polite memoranda outlining what the President “should prioritise”. And the country will be told, once again, that progress is being made, that stability is returning and that growth is around the corner.

But beneath the rhetoric lies a hard truth: We are living through a social catastrophe, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, extreme levels of inequality and communities hollowed out by deindustrialisation.

Violent crime remains endemic; rates of murder and armed robbery are staggering, while rape and other forms of gender-based violence have reached crisis proportions, reflecting structural inequality and the brutalisation of daily life.

Substance abuse, particularly among unemployed young people, spreads through townships and rural areas where hope and opportunity have been systematically stripped away.

Public health and education systems are under strain, municipalities are collapsing, and millions face energy and food insecurity.

These are not isolated pathologies. They are symptoms of an economic order that produces exclusion, desperation and social fragmentation as normal outcomes.

South Africa remains locked into a neoliberal framework that prioritises the interests of financial capital and creditors over the needs of the working class and the unemployed. Until that framework is broken, no State of the Nation Address will alter the trajectory of deepening inequality, mass unemployment and social decay.

When ‘progress’ means prepaid meters

Consider the recent statement from Cosatu welcoming the “massive progress” in overcoming load shedding and calling for all consumers to be moved to prepaid electricity billing as a way to make electricity affordable.

Prepaid meters — in a country with over 40% unemployment, deepening energy poverty, and millions dependent on social grants — are presented as the solution to unaffordable electricity.

This is the tragic narrowing of political imagination. Instead of demanding decommodified basic services, unions now endorse mechanisms that intensify commodification. Prepaid systems shift risk onto the poor. When you cannot pay, you self-disconnect. No protest. No visibility. No political crisis. Just darkness.

The logic is clear: electricity is not a right, but a product. Affordability is not secured by redistribution, cross-subsidisation or public investment, but by disciplining consumption.

That this position comes from a federation historically rooted in working-class struggle tells us something profound about the ideological terrain. Large sections of organised labour and the NGO sector have become managers of crisis rather than agents of rupture.

The real crisis: Financialised governance

South Africa’s crisis is not simply technical or managerial. It is structural.

Despite some marginal growth and a temporary boost in revenue collection from a commodities upswing, the economy remains stagnant and structurally weak. Deindustrialisation continues. Unemployment remains catastrophic. Inequality is among the worst in the world.

Yet government policy remains obsessed with “fiscal consolidation”, “investor confidence” and “debt sustainability.” Why?

Because the state is locked into a framework where the interests of financial capital dominate. The primary obligation is not to the unemployed, the landless or the working poor — it is to bondholders and ratings agencies.

Debt service costs consume an ever-growing share of the budget. Austerity becomes permanent. Social spending is squeezed. Public sector employment is frozen. Infrastructure decays.

The formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU) marks a decisive shift to the right. By consolidating the most pro-business forces in the political establishment, the GNU deepens and accelerates neoliberal reform. Privatisation is no longer advanced cautiously or defensively, but with renewed confidence — through public-private partnerships (PPPs), outsourcing, market liberalisation and the restructuring of state-owned entities — intensifying the transfer of public wealth and power into private hands.

Eskom and the myth of the competitive market

Take Eskom.

The solution on the table is “unbundling” — breaking Eskom into separate generation, transmission and distribution entities, and constructing a competitive electricity market.

We are told this will bring efficiency and lower prices.

But global experience tells a different story. From California to the UK, electricity market liberalisation has produced volatility, price spikes, speculation and crisis. Energy becomes a financial asset class. Public planning gives way to market chaos.

In South Africa, unbundling will also mean job losses and the erosion of coordinated public control over a strategic asset. It fragments capacity at precisely the moment when we need integrated planning for a just energy transition.

Instead of defending Eskom as a public good to be democratically restructured and expanded, sections of organised labour have accepted the premises of market reform. The terrain of struggle shifts from defending public ownership to negotiating the terms of its dismantling.

No strategy for unemployment

There is, in truth, no serious strategy to overcome unemployment within the current policy framework.

The promise of private investment, structural reforms and improved “business confidence” has been repeated for decades. The results are visible: deindustrialisation, precarious work, and a ballooning informal sector.

Where is the plan for large-scale job creation? Not Expanded Public Works Programme patches or youth internships, but systemic transformation?

It does not exist — because it would require confronting capital.

A country awash in resources

We are constantly told there is no money.

This is false.

South Africa is awash with resources:

• Extraordinary wealth concentrated in the hands of the top 0.01%. (The top 0.01% of adults — roughly 3,500 individuals — own about 15% of total household wealth. This share is greater than the combined wealth of the bottom 90% of the population!)
• Around R1.8-trillion sitting idle in corporate bank accounts.
• Massive surpluses in the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF).
• Roughly R3-trillion in assets under management by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC).
• Vast pension and institutional fund assets seeking returns (R5-trillion to R6-trillion.)

The issue is not scarcity. It is control and political will.

These resources are currently marshalled to sustain financial markets, not to transform the material conditions of the majority.

What a real break would look like

If the State of the Nation Address were to reflect the needs of the working class, it would not tinker at the edges. It would announce a rupture.

• It would reject austerity outright.
• It would halt privatisation — overt and covert.
• It would commit to:
• A mass public housing programme, using local materials and labour, driving industrial revival.
• Expansion of public transport, reducing costs for workers while creating jobs in manufacturing and construction.
• Publicly planned renewable energy expansion under democratic control, without market fragmentation.
• Land redistribution and agrarian reform, oriented toward food production and agro-processing, strengthening food sovereignty.
• Reindustrialisation anchored in public procurement and state-led investment.
• Expansion of the care economy — rebuilding and extending public health, education and social welfare — recognising care as socially necessary labour.

This is not Utopian. It is practical and necessary.

Funding mechanisms could include:

• Redirecting and leveraging public pension assets toward developmental mandates.
• Progressive wealth taxation.
• Capital controls to curb financial flight.
• Reorienting the PIC toward strategic industrial investment.
• Challenging the dominance of debt service over social investment.

Such a programme would require confrontation with financial capital — domestic and international. It would require political courage and mass mobilisation.

From polite appeals to mass resistance

But here lies the final problem.

We cannot rely on Ramaphosa to announce this rupture. Nor can we expect polite submissions from NGOs or carefully worded statements from union spokespersons to shift the direction of the state.

Budget cuts must be resisted in the streets and workplaces.

Privatisation must be resisted through organised mass action.

Retrenchments must be fought, not managed.

The crisis demands more than mild-mannered proposals about what the President “should” include in his speech. It demands a revival of militant, independent working-class politics.

The State of the Nation Address is not delivered in Parliament. It is shaped in the balance of forces in society.

If we want a different speech, we need a different struggle.

South Africa does not lack wealth. It lacks power in the hands of the majority.

Until that changes, every State of the Nation Address will remain a performance — and the real state of the nation will continue to deteriorate.

Our role and task is not to advise power, but to build the power capable of breaking with it. DM

Brian Ashley is the founder and director of the Alternative and Information Development Centre (AIDC).