The president must put the needs of the people before his own, says the DA’s Mmusi Maimane.
Over the past few years, the president’s State of the Nation address has become a repetition of the same themes, showing little leadership, and resulting in many broken promises.
Nonetheless, we will afford the president the opportunity to address the nation. Breaking the rules of Parliament, and disrupting the address, does nothing to deal with the key issues facing our country.
We will not give up our fight to see the president held to account for the maladministration and corruption that characterise his administration, but the occasion is not the place for theatrics.
We will soon meet the president in court where he will face 783 charges of corruption. We will also meet him in the National Assembly on March 11 to answer questions.
On Thursday, however, we will be looking to see what the government plans to do to solve the serious problems facing our people. First and foremost on his agenda must be the electricity crisis that is gripping our country.
Due to government inaction and mismanagement at Eskom, the parastatal no longer has the ability to meet our electricity requirements. This has left our economy without the fuel needed to grow and thrive. Since load shedding began in 2008, it has cost the South African economy R300 billion and a million jobs.
Load shedding is job shedding. Apart from the inconvenience caused by electricity outages, the electricity crisis has a devastating economic impact on our people.
We must open Eskom to competition from the private sector. There are independent power producers who are ready and waiting to supply the electricity that it cannot, but are prevented from doing so while the government blocks full access to the national grid.
This is the only way to unlock the potential that the market has to generate the electricity needed to grow our economy and create jobs. It is in the best interests of our country to remove the management of the grid from the hands of Eskom and place it in the hands of an independent institution.
The ANC’s decision to dispose of the Independent System and Market Operator Bill is a devastating blow. Our greatest hope for the president’s address is that he will announce a plan to break Eskom’s monopoly of our electricity supply so that we can restore power to the people.
But solving the electricity crisis is only one part of the puzzle.
The president’s next priority must be to address the major skills shortage that has resulted in such high unemployment, especially among the youth.
In his 2011 address, Zuma promised that over the next 10 years he would create 5 million jobs. Since the president took office in 2009, the number of unemployed has grown by 2 million. The young have suffered the most from this lack of jobs and comprise 67.5 percent of those unemployed.
To solve this problem, Zuma must do more than make broad promises about job creation; he must introduce targeted measures to address youth unemployment.
The Employment Tax Incentive that was supposed to do this has not succeeded. While the incentive intended to create 178 000 jobs for young people over three years, data from the third-quarter 2014 labour force survey shows that overall the number of unemployed youth grew by more than 200 000 from 2013.
We believe this watered-down version of what should have been a real youth wage subsidy has not had a significant impact on their employment prospects and must be addressed in the coming year.
Contributing to this problem is a school system that is not adequately preparing school leavers for the job market.
To become a growing, world-class economy we need to focus on raising adult literacy and improving pass rates in critical subjects such as mathematics and physical science. Teachers must be subjected to competency testing and pupils must write regular literacy and numeracy tests.
Unemployment and inferior education go hand in hand; they must be tackled together.
Finally, we hope to see the president announce real measures to fight crime. South Africans do not feel safe in their own communities, with violence all too common.
This is worsened by the fact that many believe the police are part of the problem. Police brutality and the corruption of officers do little to encourage faith in the SAPS.
To make our country safer, we need to understand and address the causes of crime – and create a more effective police service.
We need stronger action to fight drug abuse – by, for instance, bringing back special units to fight gangsterism and drugs. Since special units were disbanded in 2004, drug-related crimes have more than doubled.
These special units must have the tools they need to do their work. In 2012, half the police stations did not have enough computers and barely 4 percent of officers had been trained to handle sexual offence cases. Our police must be better trained and properly equipped.
Moreover, corruption and mismanagement in the police must be dealt with promptly and harshly, to restore faith in the criminal justice system. Citizens need to feel they can trust policemen and women to protect them, root out criminality, and prosecute criminals effectively.
When the president finishes his speech on Thursday, we will be left with a single question: what concrete actions are to be taken to improve the living standards of ordinary South Africans?
What is being done to restore power to the people, create jobs, improve education and fight crime? These are our central concerns.
We have heard the rhetoric before, but change is slow in coming when leadership is lacking.
The president has a mandate to uphold the constitution and our democracy. He must take personal responsibility for the true state of our nation and put the needs of the people before his own.
* Mmusi Maimane is parliamentary leader of the DA.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
Sunday Tribune