President Cyril Ramaphosa delivering his 2024 Sona address. Image: GCIS.
Various people and organisations have different wishes for Thursday night when President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers his Sona for 2025.
The president is expected to talk about the usual suspects, such as electricity, Transnet, and, of course, South Africa’s global leadership heading the G20 this year.
However, Wayne Duvenage, CEO of civil action organisation Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa), says he firstly wants to hear the president tell us how his government intends to win the war on corruption.
“Outa hopes to hear a State of the Nation Address (Sona) with innovative solutions and convincing plans to get organised crime and corruption under control.
“While recent geo-political developments in the US and DRC will no doubt attract a lot of the president’s attention in this year’s Sona, Outa wants him to use Sona 2025 to tell us how his government intends to win the war on corruption.”
Duvenage says the crisis of corruption has been raging for many years and is getting worse.
“Despite government acknowledging that the scourge of corruption and organised crime is a crisis, the president is certainly not taking it seriously or treating it as a crisis.
“We are tired of the lip service about plans to prioritise the fight against corruption, and we want clear, action-oriented plans with deadlines, along with the funding being built into the upcoming Budget 2025.
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Duvenage says the president has an enormous Cabinet, and therefore, he wants to hear a comprehensive, realistic and tough plan from this large group.
“We would also really like to see the backs of some of those ministers, such as Thembi Simelane, who do not have a place in a corruption-free government.”
He points out that the president said at the opening of the seventh parliament in July last year: “To tackle crime and corruption, we must have capable, sophisticated and independent law enforcement agencies that can fight complex and organised crime”.
“There were promises of modern technology to help with crime-fighting, a data-driven approach and a focus on priority crimes, including gang violence and the construction mafia, and yet we do not get a sense of meaningful traction in this regard.
“We must see vast improvements in capacity building to enable these law enforcement agencies to become far more ‘capable, sophisticated and independent’ with modern technology and a collaborative approach between the various agencies if we are to get on top of this crisis.
“This means more highly skilled and capable expertise with the ability to fight organised crime in Sars, the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), the Hawks, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and its Investigating Directorate, as well as the Public Protector.”
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Duvenage says the courts also desperately need more funds to improve systems and working conditions, with the introduction of specialised anti-corruption courts to focus on the complexities required to tackle organised criminal syndicates and money laundering.
In addition, he says, the substantial delays in securing court dates have amplified the denial of justice and has become a serious challenge when it comes to addressing crime and corruption.
“Criminal syndicates operate within many state-owned entities and government departments, thriving on procurement manipulation, irregularities and fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
“At Outa, we continue to witness the common agendas and modus operandi playing out time and time again. And yet we see little evidence of government being able to get this situation under control or tackle the sophisticated criminal networks that have infiltrated so many sectors of state spending.”
Duvenage says Outa would also like to see the State Capture Commission recommendations that were largely ignored until now, implemented in full.
He also points out that the president’s own National Anti-Corruption Agency has been extremely slow in its commissioning, while the Public Procurement Anti-Corruption Agency recommended by the State Capture Commission is nowhere to be seen.
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“In the July 2024 opening of parliament address and on many occasions before that, the president promised that our municipalities would be fixed, and yet we see no concrete steps to address the demise and financial ruin of many municipalities, with very little accountability for those who have caused the demise and looting of these entities.”
Duvenage says the public is fed up with false promises while weak law enforcement continues to plague the nation and keep millions trapped in poverty.
“While the country will no doubt cherish the president’s claims of success in tackling load shedding, the efforts to address Transnet’s woes, the increased investment in infrastructure and improved visa application processing, we will be listening closely to this year’s Sona 2025 speech and later this month to the minister of finance’s budget speech, for meaningful talk and resources being allocated to the anti-corruption agenda.”
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Roxanna Naidoo, head of global strategy at Latita Africa, says she expects the tone of this year’s Sona to be more positive as we move further away from the problems of the 2023 and 2024 Sonas.
She says citizens should note what the president says about the government of national unity (GNU), energy security, Transnet, global leadership, and the usual suspects: economic growth, water security, corruption, crime, and gender-based violence.
She says that with the GNU serving its first term, the Sona is the ideal platform to spotlight its success as a multiparty coalition and its achievements since coming to power.
“It is likely the GNU will feature strongly in the introduction with references to it peppered throughout the speech to expand public support.”
While 2023’s Sona described the need and plan to end load shedding, the 2024 Sona was more optimistic, with work towards solving the crisis nearing completion.
In 2025, load shedding is almost a distant memory with only a small risk of returning.
“The president will probably frame this as a resounding success, assuring the achievement of other energy projects, such as the Just Energy Transition and private energy investments and developments,” Naidoo says.
A key problem area in the last two Sonas, Transnet is expected to turn a profit in 2025. However, Naidoo says this will reportedly arise from its selling off some of its property.
“I think South Africans are more interested in whether or not Transnet can reliably deliver critical services for business, and we expect the president to share progress on its operational rehabilitation.”
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South Africa’s G20 presidency, its pioneering role in Brics and the organisation’s continuing expansion, as well as its hosting of the G20 summit later this year, promise to project the country as a capable world leader, Naidoo says.
“This gives us the opportunity to shape global policy while promoting South Africa’s reputation on the international stage and the president is sure to touch on how this will benefit the nation.”
Concerns such as economic growth, water security, corruption, crime and gender-based violence have also featured heavily in the two previous Sona and remain far from resolved.
Naidoo says although the president will probably highlight the jump in the matric pass rate from 80.1% (2022) to 87.3% (2024), youth unemployment is still a major issue.
So is unemployment in general, poverty and the struggle to create jobs faster than workers enter the market.
“Although we do not expect any sudden leaps forward in progress on these issues, we hope there will at least be encouraging improvements.”
Sona 2025 should be more celebratory than previous years, without marginalising the work that still needs to be done to secure economic growth and equity, political and social stability, foreign investment, and other imperatives.
“However, we see further tectonic shifts in the world order, and this could lead the president to be more cautiously optimistic about his outlook for 2025,” Naidoo says.
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