Business people ‘quite pleased’ with Ramaphosa’s work, diplomat tells Maimane

Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane held his party’s alternative state of the nation address yesterday that failed to impress, among others, ANC head of elections Fikile Mbalula, who took to social media to view his disappointment.

In his address, Maimane touched on the country’s unemployment, inequality, and crime as a result of the ruling party’s “looting”.

He said: “Four out of ten South Africans can’t find work, and we have the highest youth unemployment in the whole world. We also have the highest inequality in the world. Half our people live below the poverty line, and 17 million social grants are all that stand between them and extreme hunger and suffering.

“Some of our communities experience rates of violent crime that put them on par with war zones, and we have among the highest murder and rape stats in the world. And although we sit at the very top of all these terrible lists, these aren’t even the things we are best known for as a country. That honour belongs to the endemic and systemic corruption that has infected every single aspect of our life here.

“Thanks to more than two decades of looting at every level and sphere of government, this is how we are known throughout the world. If we want to gauge the real state of our nation, we need to hold this South Africa up against the dream we once had for our country. We need to recognise that things are getting progressively worse for us, and we have to acknowledge that the reason they’re getting worse is the ANC.”

In an interview with the SABC following Maimane’s address, DA chief whip John Steenhuisen said the purpose of his party’s alternative state of the nation address was to paint an alternative version for South Africans for them to realise their country could be better under a DA-led government.

“We can have change and progress as a country but it would require some tough choices to be made and [a] certainly tougher choice than [President] Cyril Ramaphosa has made over the course of [the] first year of his presidency. He set out some very ambitious targets that he has not met and we set out a clear vision of how you could get people back to work, but most importantly how you can get South Africa working again under a DA-led administration,” he said.

All this, however, seemed to have been a disappointment to Mbalula, who called Maimane’s Sona “a big flop”, and he was not the only one.

TimesLive reported that the consul general of Portugal in Cape Town, José Carlos Reis Arsénio, told Maimane on Wednesday that business people seemed to have been impressed by Ramaphosa’s effort in boosting the economy.

The publication quoted him as saying “various business people who were in contact with the consulate, including some from the Cape Town-based Portuguese community, were quite pleased with Ramaphosa’s performance as far as business and the economy were concerned” and that they were “ready to take their votes from the DA and give them to the ANC”.

South African business people in Cape Town were reportedly also in support of Ramaphosa’s ideas “to the point that I sense many of them may be ready to give their votes to President Ramaphosa as perhaps a contradiction to the previous vote to the DA,” he further said.

(Compiled by Vhahangwele Nemakonde)

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