Last week, South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered the annual state of the nation address and charted a new course for the country as well as his own administration, the sixth he’ll give since he took office in 2018. This particular edition was keenly looked forward to by observers, given South Africa’s multiple issues, growing unemployment, rising inflation and economic consequences of the COVID19 pandemic. President Ramaphosa highlighted the need for fundamental changes to revive economic growth, tackle corruption and endemic poverty, corruption and unemployment. Business Edge for this week features Professor Bonang Mohale from Business Unity South Africa joining Tolulope Adeleru-Balogun.
The numbers coming from South Africa make for grim reading: as of Q3 2021, unemployment is at 34.9%, one of the highest rates in the world. This is worsened by electricity power cuts, making inflation reach 5.5%. President Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation speech addressed these issues directly, promising not to leave anyone behind as it tried to recover from all of these stifling issues. In the words of Professor Mohale, although the address touched on the right points, there are specific steps needed to be taken to fix the country. “We ask the president to focus on implementation and execution of the framework that is required to get South Africa out of this quagmire… to lift the low level of confidence experienced in the country, the worst since the end of the second world war.”
Another major issue South Africa is dealing with that got prominence in President Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation address is the matter of electricity supply. Its lingering power cuts and rationing have caused months of low productivity in the industrial sector. “Electricity is the first means of production”, Professor Mohale said. “Without electricity, you don’t even have power to get water into the homes of residents, which is the next looming crisis… the fundamental problem is that the money to be used to fix ESKOM has been stolen.”
The full discussion, which includes other matters such as the COVID vaccine roll-out, unemployment and the rest of the Ramamphosa State of the Nation address, is above.