President Cyril Ramaphosa isn’t glossing over the bad bits of the 25-year story of democratic South Africa — and that’s the good news.
Ramaphosa gave his take on the first quarter-century of the South African story and plotted some of what lies ahead in government’s plan to get the country out of the dark pits he acknowledged, including rising poverty, high violent crime, high unemployment, State Capture, tanking SOEs, jittery investors and rating agencies, and fissures and weaknesses in government and the civil service.
As optimism has faded after the euphoria of 1994, so has the work on actual nation-building, which Ramaphosa called “a work in progress”. He said South Africans have settled for allegiance to the symbols of unity rather than in forging a common national identity and a social compact with one another and with the government.
Soko homed in on education as a key weakness and said that South Africa’s expenditure on education — at 6% of GDP — was higher than most countries, but reaped fewer benefits compared with countries that spent less. He also raised concerns about the power of teachers’ unions that dictated the knowledge agenda at schools.
Mbete cautioned government for not recognising the layers and context of deep social ills such as poverty and its terrible intersection with drug and alcohol abuse, and even gangsterism as a job opportunity, when there was nothing else for someone to turn to. She said the government had to make a change in the lived realities of people’s lives.
Ufrieda The conference needs to step back and examine why democracy is producing increasing poor outcomes for SA. Why voters make poor decisions time and again.
Ufrieda Another talk shop that will result to nothing
Ufrieda He was given the mandate by zuma to turn around eskom in 2014 see how that worked. The man is as useless as a hammer to a screw ! SA is so f4cked, I'm almost out, could not be happier.. I'll be laughing from the sidelines soon.