The efficacy of the SONA promises is undermined by austerity measures and a lack of clear plans for public service reform. The government’s focus on economic growth through market-oriented policies often contradicts its social democratic rhetoric and fails to address structural poverty.
By MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO
In his State of the Nation Address (SONA), delivered on February 7, President Cyril Ramaphosa reiterated the mantra that the ANC-led government has recited over and over again for the past thirty years.
He committed his government to driving an inclusive growth, job-creation, poverty-reduction, reducing the high cost of living, and building a capable, ethical and developmental state that is underpinned by a professional public service. He said the achievement of this vision requires a state with leaders who are prepared to serve people with complete dedication, and public servants who are ethical, skilled and properly qualified.
What Ramaphosa failed to address is the fact that the efficacy of the public service is hindered by his government’s austerity measures which includes freezing of vacant public service posts, tightening of screws on public servants’ salaries and its plans kick out 30 000 public service employees, as announced in Minister Enoch Godongwana’s Mid-term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS). The promise that the government’s streamlining of the public service will create a space for younger professionals and recent graduates remains hollow in the absence of a clear plan and timeline for filling vacant positions in public service as speedy as possible.
Government’s obsession with creating a leaner public service and leaner wage bill for the sector, while promising a developmental state, reflects South Africa’s policy quandary: the disjuncture between a social democratic rhetoric that promises pro-poor development and growth-centric, market-oriented economic policies that prioritise inflation-targeting, cutting the costs of labour and recovering the costs of the delivery of public services above targeting structural poverty, unemployment and inequality.
This is amplified by the assertion and emphasis of Ramaphosa in SONA that the urgent task of his government is to grow the economy so that the government can create jobs, reduce poverty and improve the lives of all South Africans. This exposes the fact that the Ramaphosa-led GNU administration is trapped in the trickle-down economics that South Africa adopted since it deviated from the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) to Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) and subsequent policies.
Trickle-down economics is shaped by the view that social security and social development impedes economic growth, which buttresses the notion that social security is a form of luxury to be promoted only in countries which are already rich. The logical outcome of this perspective is a political economy trajectory that prioritises economic growth and views social development as the after-effect of the trickle-down effect of economic growth. The implication or consequence thereof is the residualisation of social policy from universal social protection to a narrow focus on safety-nets. Instead of viewing social development, economic development, and social policy and economic policy as interlinked and complementary, a residual model is a welfare system in which social welfare institutions only come into play when the normal structures, such as the family and the market, breakdown.
This results in a growth-centric, market-oriented, capital-intensive neoliberal policy path that breeds a job-shedding, environment-degrading economic growth. This offers rapid and immediate profit- maximisation and upward mobility to the capitalists and upper and middle classes but pins the hopes of the rest of the population on the lethargic snail-paced trickle-down effect of the market-forces. Instead of prioritising socio-economic development, job-creation and wealth and income distribution, trickle-down economics views them as bonuses ensuing from economic growth surpluses.
Ramaphosa indicated that to achieve the objectives of a developmental, ethical and efficient state, his government is strengthening the role of the Public Service Commission in the appointment of key people who direct public service affairs: Directors-General, Deputy Directors-General, Chief Executive Officers of SOEs and board members and other senior positions. Hopefully, such appointments are not going to be grounded on the skewed deployment practices that are based on party membership and give-and-take arrangements between coalition partners rather than merit. In this regard, the initiative of a graduate recruitment scheme aimed at ‘attracting the best and the brightest into the public service’ is much welcomed.
Ramaphosa reports that Social Employment Fund created over 80 000 jobs in 2024 and supported more than 12 000 participants to enter entrepreneurial activities. He further reports that young people secured 235 000 work opportunities through the National Pathway Management Network. But with data, as it is the case with policies and programmes, the devil is in the detail. It would be helpful to get details such as the type and categories of jobs that were created (i.e. permanent or temporary jobs, unskilled, skilled or semi-skilled jobs etc), the industries in which the jobs were created, the wage brackets and gender, race and disability representation in the ‘80 000 jobs’.
It is encouraging that the government seeks to use the National Health Insurance to reduce inequalities in healthcare and promote fair treatment and that the SONA emphasised that the immediate priority of government is to strengthen the health system and improve the quality of care. One cannot but agree with Ramaphosa that the modernisation, improvement and maintenance of existing health facilities and construction of new hospitals and clinics is crucial for the success of the NHI and the promotion of health equity. Similarly, it is encouraging to hear the President report that a number of hospitals are under construction or undergoing revitalisation. The spanner in the works is the harsh reality of the squalid conditions at existing hospitals and clinics, and high levels of dysfunctionality and mismanagement in these institutions. As things stands, GNU has exhibited little will and competence to address the debilitating state of existing healthcare institutions and infrastructure. In the middle of all this, Ramaphosa and his GNU are not clear about how NHI will be funded and resourced and to allay fears of employees being worse off or burdened with extra taxes to fund the scheme.
It is a step in the right direction for the Ramaphosa administration to commit itself to rolling back apartheid spatial planning by building housing in city centres closer to work and business opportunities, redesigning our housing subsidies, directing more funding towards programmes that enable people to buy or rent a home in an area of their choice, releasing more underutilised state properties for affordable housing development and reclaim buildings that have been hijacked in the city centres and repurpose them for public use. However, Ramaphosa is tight-lipped about plans and timelines for unlocking the current backlogs in the provision of housing, in the processing of land claims and the rapid release of land and serviced stands to qualifying households who would not be able to meet their own housing needs without government assistance. It is simply difficult for poor people who are at the receiving end of the indecisiveness and failure of government to act with speed on housing and land claims backlogs, and the release of land for housing to believe in the willingness and capacity of the government to deliver on the SONA promises regarding housing and dismantling the apartheid geography.
The Transformation Fund which is intended to allocate R80-billion to Black-owned and small businesses, is misnamed and meant to mislead. The empowerment of a Black business elite does not translate in the transformation of skewed patterns of ownership and control of national wealth nor does it significantly tinker with the apartheid economy and the apartheid geography. If anything, it is prone to be become a patronage mechanism that seeks to woo and reward a politically connected Black business elite and to use this elite as a buffer between the government and the working-class and the underclasses.
Essentially, the efficacy of the SONA promises is undermined by austerity measures and a lack of clear plans for public service reform. The government’s focus on economic growth through market-oriented policies often contradicts its social democratic rhetoric, leading to a disjointed approach that fails to address structural poverty and inequality effectively.
While initiatives like the National Health Insurance and housing reforms are steps in the right direction, their success is hindered by existing systemic issues and a lack of detailed implementation plans. Ultimately, without addressing these contradictions and providing clear, actionable strategies, the promises made in the SONA risk remaining unfulfilled aspirations.
Mphutlane wa Bofelo is a political theorist who focuses on the interface between politics, governance and development.
