• On Thursday 9th February our President will speak to the nation in his annual State of the Nation address.
• In reality it should be a very short speech.
“Good evening my fellow South Africans, The Country is broken and dysfunctional. I thank you”
• But we know that we will get the usual pomp and ceremony, followed by 30 minutes of ‘rebuilding, state capture, we are busy with….and obfuscating”. There may however be some entertainment value that the EFF will no doubt provide. But even that is tedious and boring in its repetitiveness.
• It’s the one time of the year that ordinary South Africans actually wish for a total blackout so they don’t have to watch our politicians preening themselves
• . Except there is a Twenty Twenty semi-final on the same date.
• Remember when we were promised S.M.A.R.T cities, Ministerial score cards and life-style audits? Good times we had.
• I am being unfair, the S.M.A.R.T.A cities promise has been delivered. We just did not know that SMART stands for “Stealing My Assets Robustly Time and Again”
• What a dismal state of affairs currently at play in our beloved country.
• Endless rolling blackouts, Anemic growth, corruption at every level of society, municipal chaos, and crime levels to such a degree that police stations have become regular targets.
• And yet our Government can still find time for hair brained schemes like spending a billion rand on a marketing exercise to attract visitors to our country, or A few million rand on a flag pole.
• All the while our fiscus deteriorates further. Our SOE’s continue to hemorrhage, and ordinary South Africans face daily hardships of unemployment, higher prices, and nonexistent service delivery.
• No doubt our President will make some new promises about solving our energy crisis, and our unemployment crisis, and our service delivery crisis, and our crime crisis, and and and.
• However there is now such a trust deficit between our Government and it citizens that nothing he says can be believed.
• Then man has not yet even hinted at changing his cabinet since his victory at the ANC conference, even though in its ranks, are ministers who openly defy him. Minsters who openly challenge him.
• The only news that we have had about the cabinet is that the Minster who handled the Covid State of disaster is now the same minister touted to handle the Energy State of disaster.
• Is It any wonder then that the currency reacts the way it did over the last few days. Some negative news internationally (Friday's nonfarm payrolls surprise), and all our vulnerabilities are immediately placed in the spotlight.
• I know what I will be doing Thursday night. It involves shouts of Howzat!, but will have very little to do with How the Presidents' innings is going in Parliament.