Picture: President Cyril Ramaphosa poses for a picture accompanying his weekly message to the country, ‘From the Desk of the President’. 29 September 2019. Picture: Presidency of South Africa.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s weekly newsletter to communicate to the public progress in implementing change has been praised by leading political experts.
Professor of politics at the University of Johannesburg, Mcebisi Ndletyana, said Ramaphosa was spot-on with his “From the desk of the president” weekly messages to discuss issues of interest and concern to South Africans, and what the government was doing to tackle these.
“The president must be able to explain the intricacies of introducing change and why that is slow. So it’s a good development because silence leads people to come to the conclusion the government is not doing anything.”
He said it was clear Ramaphosa was reacting to sentiment about the slowness of the promised reforms.
“The presidency raised expectations things would change but things did not change at the right pace.”
The first newsletter yesterday said almost everyone the president had met, including rural residents in the Eastern Cape and business leaders in big cities, were deeply concerned about the economy and unemployment.
“After a decade of low growth and deepening poverty, people are looking for signs of progress in tackling the many challenges confronting our country. These concerns are real,” he said.
He vowed to rebuild confidence with concrete actions.
“Implementing change does take time, the important issue is that we move in a determined way to effect change while rooting out state capture, corruption and malfeasance,” he added.
Most of the people he had spoken to recognised “we have made progress in turning our country around”.
The changes in many state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the SA Revenue Service, the police and the State Security Agency gave people confidence his government could restore the state’s integrity.
Ndletyana said strides had been made in new high-profile appointments at the NPA, Hawks and at SOEs.
“But those new arrangements have not delivered, especially in recovering monies or prosecuting people accused of corruption … That made people disgruntled.”
– ericn@citizen.co.za
For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.
Download our app and read this and other great stories on the move. Available for Android and iOS.
