Maverick News

Sona 2025 report card - between the cooperative Weaverbird and squawking Hadeda scenarios

2 Feb 2025

With the 2025 State of the Nation Address scheduled for Thursday, 6 February, President Cyril Ramaphosa faces a Year of Reckoning on challenges from rolling blackouts and war in Africa to his presidential legacy.

How do you measure a working nation? How do you measure President Cyril Ramaphosa’s progress on the State of the Nation Address (Sona) from year to year?

I do it by keeping track of his promises using tools such as the report card we’ll get to. But to think more deeply: a good society is one in which people work (if they can), feel safe and have enough food, and primarily, it is one in which you know that the next generation’s lives will be better.

By this measure of a good society, we have a way to go. So, where are we?

The Mapungubwe Institute’s Indlulamithi scenarios for South Africa by 2025 paint a high-road scenario called the Weaverbird scenario. Like the birds, this is about a successful cooperative society (where, of course, women set the pace). Its low-road scenario is the Hadeda scenario named for the squawking Highveld birds – where tension is high and progress low. In 2025, South Africa can go either way.

On a year-to-year measure, President Ramaphosa has done well, his progress given impetus by the Government of National Unity (GNU). The jury’s out on whether the 10-party power-sharing pact has more loud critics than it has quiet adherents, but that it is beginning to work is not in dispute.

Confidence measures are up and South Africa’s performance was better than expected last year. Bloomberg’s emeritus editor-in-chief Matt Winkler found the rand was the best performer against the US dollar in 2024. His explainer is really interesting. Winkler knows South Africa well and has visited several times.

Economic resilience is improved according to this study released last week (the link is to News24, which is paywalled), retail sales for December 2024 show many South Africans had a merry Christmas. And several indicators suggest a year of better growth with jobs promised, especially by an energy revolution, and also growth in the retail and services economy – think Sixty60. But South Africa has been drawn into Africa’s longest war in the DRC and it risks being regionalised. Ten soldiers died in peace enforcement operations; soldiers’ deaths are always painfully felt. By Friday (31 January), a second pall was cast over the country as rolling blackouts returned. These could be temporary, and Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says we are a hair’s breadth from a permanent end.

Ramaphosa’s performance assessment

We identified the 17 key promises in Ramaphosa’s address last year. As you can see, most are in progress. The biggest gain, until Friday, was the 300-day respite from rolling blackouts.

In December 2022, Ramaphosa lifted the licensing cap on independent power production and unleashed an energy revolution. Renewable production (rooftop solar; new plants) are now so preponderant they have taken pressure off the grid. Just with the fix at Eskom, 2,500MW (roughly two stages of rolling blackouts) is expected, and there is 22,500MW of power in the pipeline from 130 confirmed projects with a potential value of R390-billion.

As Ramaphosa heads into his legacy years (by the end of 2027, he will be a lame-duck President when the ANC elects new leadership), this energy revolution could be his legacy. Eskom won’t be the only show in town for much longer as the energy market opens up.

While gender-based violence is still a scourge, no other President has put as much energy and money into dealing with the problem. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has made big prosecutorial gains against sexual offences, upping minimum sentencing as a preventative measure. Ramaphosa’s all-of-society approach to fighting gendered crimes is a long-term one, but he has made strides.

The other legacy the President wants to leave is that he has tackled our biggest challenge. Millions of young people are neither in employment nor in training. So, expect the Presidential Youth Employment Stimulus to be top of mind when Sona starts on Thursday night, 6 February.

Ramaphosa is South Africa’s biggest employer: billions have gone into the youth jobs plan run from the Presidency. In 2024, he said it had funded 1.7 million work and livelihood opportunities. One million young people work as school assistants. “These programmes matter because work matters to people,” Ramaphosa said in 2024.

This outcome is in that netherworld of both pass and fail. Nobody can deny the benefits of getting young people into the economy (once there, they stay, the Harambee youth employment accelerator’s work has shown), but public works are not a sustainable form of employment.

The matric results show system changes and are the best yet; the Basic Education Laws Act (Bela) will help Ramaphosa achieve a goal. This is to make early childhood education more accessible.

Minister of Water and Sanitation Minister, Pemmy Majodina, and her predecessor, Senzo Mchunu, are overseeing big shifts in water management, together with an effective DG in Sean Phillips.

Water capture was set to emerge as an existential crisis as big as the power crisis, but it is being arrested with an active civil society, a working partnership with business and political will.

Water resource management has been centralised by the national government and various reforms introduced. The Blue Drop, Green Drop and No Drop reports (which measure water and waste-water processing quality) are back after they were dropped by a previous Cabinet which didn’t like what the mirror was showing.

The department dubbed “Hell Affairs” by the media because of its bureaucratic inefficiencies is being steadily turned around by the Minister of Home Affairs, Leon Schreiber. He has cleared the visa backlog of more than 300,000 applications and introduced a trusted employer scheme to make it easier for investors to bring in the skills they need.

Mining is having a renaissance and South Africa can benefit because we have critical minerals needed to fuel new energy and transport systems (electric cars). The cadastral system providing a transparent way to see who owns which mining rights is (finally) near completion and the exploration fund has been capitalised. (Expect more on this from our colleague Ed Stoddard, who will be reporting from the Mining Indaba in Cape Town this week). The infrastructure roll-out could have a big year as Ray Mahlaka reported here.

There are 10,000 more cops on the beat, the social relief of distress grant of R370/month has been maintained and expanded. But the courts have agreed with civil society that it is too hard to access to make it an effective poverty relief measure.

2025 is looking like a year of promise, but we are quickly learning that when the US sneezes, SA catches a cold. As Victoria O’Regan and Peter Fabricius reported here, the impacts of the aid freeze and American foreign policy could hurt. Stoddard reported this week that the SA Reserve Bank has modelled what tough new tariff laws in the USA could mean for South Africa. America is one of South Africa’s largest trading partners.

That is the Weaverbird scenario. The Hadeda scenario predicts a squawking and extractive state if the big fails are not arrested.

SONA report card

The obvious one is if we do not get out of the low-growth, no-jobs rut. Most economists predict South Africa is set for 1.5% growth this year – we need to at least double that to become labour absorbing. While important scaffolding work is being done on structural water reforms, the impacts on the ground are slim. Many parts of South Africa, including Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, are water insecure because of failing metro governments.

AmaBhungane showed here that prosecutions in the big State Capture cases are elusive because the NPA has not managed to land anybody named in the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture in jail. While investigations against more than 200 people have started, the proof of the pudding is in the orange overalls. In this context, impunity has re-emerged and provincial and local State Capture hasn’t been stopped.

Most spending is in provinces to which the state’s anti-corruption efforts have not yet extended. The sphere of government that matters to ordinary people is local. This level is in serial crises, from towns to districts and metros. Turnarounds are not difficult as the quick changes to Durban have shown – a presidential intervention team is working in the city. Among the many priorities for 2025 must be to make local lekker again. DM

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Ramaphosa’s performance assessment