The uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) through its spokesperson, Nhlamulo Ndhlela has described President Cyril Ramaphosa’s first State of the Nation Address under the Government of National Unity (GNU) as a “disaster”
This is while, in the same breath, party leader in Parliament, Dr John Hlophe described it as “boring”.
Ramaphosa promised to end the current water challenges, much like his previous administration ended load shedding, while rebuilding the country’s network industries.
Reacting to some of these pronouncements by the President, Ndhlela accused Ramaphosa of attempting to privatise water and electricity infrastructure through the establishment of privately funded entities.
“The speech is a disaster. He talks about local municipality. What he is doing, he is privatising water and electricity. He is setting up entities and we have spoken out about this because we could see this was another way of privatising water and electricity by introducing grants to fund these entities. Meanwhile, these are actually loans from IMF (the International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank.
“He is also talking about network industries and the recovery thereof. All those network industries are burdened by the same loans,” Ndhlela stated.