Pretoria - The keynote speech by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) was uninspiring and does not match the pomp and ceremony which accompanies the annual political extravaganza at Parliament.
“Indeed, we would preferred that the president would have sent us a voice note or even chipped in with a WhatsApp document rather than wasting our time last night, and having the EFF to play their own gimmicks which as a protest movement they believe was warranted,” Yongama Zigebe of the UDM Youth Vanguard told broadcaster Newzroom Afrika.
“With the State of the Nation (address), we expect nothing of the nothingness it was. It was a rehash of other State of the Nation (addresses) and other addresses that the president has done. It’s all promises and promises and there is no report back to say this is what we have actually done, this is what has trickled down to the people on the ground and the positive impact that we have seen happening,” Zigebe said.
The Phala Phala farm scandal was raised pointedly when Ramaphosa delivered his State of the Nation Address on Thursday night.
This happened as the EFF objected to the joint sitting of Parliament to listen to his address, “because he took the legislature to court”.
Ramaphosa has taken a report of the Section 89 panel, which found that he has a case to answer, on judicial review in the Constitutional Court.
It took 45 minutes for Ramaphosa to have an opportunity to address the nation following many points of order and heckling from his new-found nemesis, the EFF.
Ramaphosa had just sipped from a glass of water at 7pm when EFF leader Julius Malema rose on a point of order.
Malema said the MPs could not be addressed by Ramaphosa who had taken Parliament to court over the Phala Phala scandal. “He has passed a motion of no confidence in his Parliament. Until he has resolved the dispute between us and him, he has no leg to address,” he said.
“The right thing to do, is we should allow the court to make a ruling,” Malema added.
Commenting on the speech, the UDM Youth Vanguard said Ramaphosa seemed to be “motivating” for what South Africa can become.
“He was only motivating. As we have said time and time before, President Cyril Ramaphosa is a motivational speaker and he should step down as a president and continue in his career as a motivational speaker. That is actually what he did yesterday,” said Zigebe.
“When you think about a ministry of electricity in the Presidency … how many ministers are we going to have? Are we going to have a minister of potholes, a minister of GBV and so on? What happens to the ministry of energy and the ministry of public enterprises where Eskom currently sits? What happens to these ministers?
“So now President Ramaphosa is hiding behind bloating his Cabinet so that he cannot deal with ministers who cannot fulfil their mandate, who cannot perform. Now he is dilly-dallying around the issue of the Cabinet reshuffle which is long overdue. He, himself, should be stepping down,” he said.
The Economic Freedom Fighters has scheduled a press conference after the events that took place when their planned disruption of Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address resulted in the opposition party being ejected.
IOL