SONA 2022: Straight from the DA playbook. Ramaphosa must now implement
10 February 2022
The bulk of the President’s State of the Nation Address this evening could easily have been a DA speech, and he should be commended for at least saying some of the right things.
However, he has made the right noises in the past too, only to go missing when they had to be implemented. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and so we caution all South Africans to hold the applause until these announcements become actions, if they ever do.
His realisation, decades too late, that “government doesn’t create jobs; businesses create jobs...government must create the conditions that will enable the private sector” is a considerable departure from his party’s central control-obsessed approach to the economy and jobs. And he is entirely correct in this new assessment. But until he walks the walk by significantly reforming labour legislation and by downsizing his bloated public sector with its thousands of millionaire managers, that will just remain talk.
Similarly, his admission that "there are too many regulations in this country that are unduly complicated, costly and difficult to comply with - this prevents companies from growing and creating jobs” is precisely what the DA has been telling him for years. It is why the DA-run Western Cape has a very successful Red Tape Reduction Unit. If the President is serious about streamlining bureaucracy, he should send some of his ministers to the Western Cape on internships.