Ramaphosa has led SA into a failed-state position

8 February 2023

The forthcoming 2023 State of The Nation Address (SONA) comes at a critical point i.e., on the eve of the election year (2024) and thus calls for a comprehensive assessment and analysis of the performance of the 6th Administration under the leadership of President Ramaphosa. The ATM has scanned through the entire period from February 2018 when Mr Ramaphosa became the President of South Africa, to date.

The ATM has made a startling observation that from the beginning to the end of the Feb 2018 SONA by President Ramaphosa, the two critical words, Energy and Load-shedding do not feature anywhere in the entire address. This is because there was no Energy or Loadshedding problem when he took over the reigns as the Head of State.

The only reference to Eskom is related to the triumphalism of his administration with the support of the ANC leadership where they reported changes in the Leadership structure of Eskom. The nation was told that such changes would strengthen governance, root out corruption and restore financial position of Eskom. It is very clear that these interference measures didn't work because according the Eskom Annual Report for the year ended March 2022, a R 12 billion net loss was reported and the closing balance of fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounted to R5 billion. Despite the fact that in the report it is stated that this fruitless and wasteful expenditure cannot be condoned, but no-one in the leadership of Eskom has been held accountable. Even the shareholder Minister of Eskom, Mr Pravin Gordhan was not held accountable.

Following the interference in Eskom by the Ramaphosa administration including signing up Independent Power Producers (whose identities are yet to be disclosed), they managed to drop the Energy Availability Factor from 78% in 2018 down to 58% in January 2023.

In the intervening period massive destruction of businesses regardless of size was the order of the day. Today we hear that this hapless administration is contemplating declaring a state of disaster in energy, yet South Africa is still reeling from the devastating Covid state of disaster where the Constitution was by default suspended and replaced by dictatorship which was characterised by rampant looting and irrational regulations.

In her 2021/22 report, the Auditor General laments the lack of prudence in spending the limited funds. The report says "Over the three-year term of the current administration, auditees have disclosed fruitless and wasteful expenditure totalling R5,83 billion. Since 2019, we also identified non-compliance and fraud resulting in an estimated R12 billion in financial loss...." How can any sane person trust the Ramaphosa administration with the public purse?

This administration told us amongst others, that to avoid covid, we must not purchase warm food, not buy sandals and certain other garments and they introduced apartheid type curfews. We hope that the recent order by the Court for Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma to supply minutes and record of decisions taken during covid state of disaster will vindicate our position that indeed those decisions were irrational and unlawful.

The ATM re-iterates its position of being opposed to the declaration of the state of disaster in energy.

The ATM is on record calling for Eskom to be put under administration and to be over-seen by a multi-party committee appointed by parliament. We do not want another looting spree.

In Feb 2018, President Ramaphosa themed his tenure as New Dawn where he promised the citizens of South Africa Heaven and Earth. Some of the highlights of the promises included behaving in an ethical manner and espousing ethical leadership in honour of President Mandela.

In his address, Mr Ramaphosa hit all the right notes and spoke about the creation of jobs, factories, roads, houses and clinics. Instead, him personally was found in an embarrassingly unethical situation where it's now common cause that he was found to have hidden millions of US Dollars, under his mattresses and stuffed some in the sofas. President Mandela is probably turning in his grave out of embarrassment.

The Independent Panel comprised of a Former Chief Justice, a Judge and a Senior Counsel, was unanimous that Mr Ramaphosa has prima facie case to answer in terms of violating his oath of office, flouting of SARB laws and regulations governing various aspects pertaining to foreign currency, probable tax evasion, failure to report a crime in his Phala-Phala Farm and violating the constitution by engaging in other paid work, to name but a few.

The ATM insists that Mr Ramaphosa has rendered himself a constitutional delinquent who should respect the people of South Africa by announcing his resignation on the 901 of February 2023 instead peddling more lies under the guise of the State of the Nation Address. The ATM will find it very difficult to sit through a SONA led by a constitutional delinquent.

Some of the empty promises that were made in the Feb 2018 SONA, included Radical Economic Transformation where he said women and communities would be owners, managers and even financiers. He said land distribution programmes would be accelerated.

In hindsight, it is now clear that these were all lies to simply lure the voters to vote for his party in the 2019 National Elections. It's common cause that the ANC caucus in Parliament twisted the promised Expropriation Without Compensation which was part of Mr Ramaphosa rhetoric in the Feb 2018 SONA. To the disgust of the left leaning opposition parties including the ATM, we discovered that the Bill to amend s25 of the Constitution to enable Expropriation Without Compensation was now using a new phrase," Expropriation With No Compensation", instead, which in fact has the opposite effect. It's not clear why Mr Ramaphosa and his party undermined the intelligence of the nation through such failed primary school trickery.

Beyond the 2019 elections and following his inauguration ceremony as the President of the Republic of South Africa, he made new promises in the June 2019 SONA in particular to reduce crime, however the latest report delivered by Minister Cele on 22 Aug 2022 paints a shocking picture of a country losing the war against crime. 9516 rape cases were opened with SAPS in just three months between April and June 2022. A staggering 6 424 people were killed in South Africa in the 1st quarter of 2022/2023, this is an increase of 664 more people murdered as compared to same period in the previous year. It boggles the mind that the Board of SA Tourism (appointed by Cabinet) is hell-bent to bring international visitors into a slaughterhouse.

In the 2019 SONA, 500 000 housing units were promised, to date just under 14 000 were delivered by the Housing Development Agency. There was also a Smart City promised near Lanseria Airport, where the earmarked land to this day remains a bush. The list of empty promises is endless. As recent as in Feb 2022 he promised a New Social Compact within 100 days, yet no less than President Thabo Mbeki is on record pointing out that, this objective was also not met. Needless to mention record high unemployment and Load-shedding.

The catastrophic failure of the Ramaphosa led administration to create jobs and the being out of touch with the community needs is laid bare by the recent and proud announcement by Mr Ramaphosa that 29 million people in South Africa receive some form of social grants (instead of jobs). Basically, Mr Ramaphosa sees nothing wrong with the record high unemployment and erosion of the dignity of the people as long as they keep voting for his party and living from hand to mouth through the social grants.

Finally, the ATM is concerned at the failure rate of the State-Owned companies under the current Ramaphosa administration and the fact that Ramaphosa and his economic envoys and endless summits continue to plunge the country into more debt that the country can ill afford. The Gross loan debt is expected to increase from R4.35 trillion (69,5% of GDP) in 2021/22 to R4.69 trillion (72.8% of GDP) in 2022/23.

Before we know the creditors will be making unreasonable demands to recoup their money. The decline of the ANC electoral support from 62.15% in 2014 to 57.5% in 2019 and the dip to below 50% in the 2021 Local Government Elections is a clear message of No Confidence Vote by the people of South Africa in the Ramaphosa led ANC and its administration.

The ATM is calling on Mr Ramaphosa to heed the message of the voters, save South Africa from a further FREE FALL and resign with immediate effect together with his entire Cabinet.

If President Ramaphosa could hide from the nation that the 2nd in command, the Deputy President resigned weeks ago, which in fact explains why he didn't attend the recent Cabinet Lekgotla, why should South Africa trust him?

Yours in peaceful revolution,

Issued by Vuyo Zungula, President of ATM, 8 February 2023