The State of the Nation Address (SONA) presents a major moment for any South African president, but there is no denying that the 2018 speech given by Cyril Ramaphosa is special – not least because of the events leading up to it.<\/p>\n
While there are some safe bets for tonight’s address – some applause lines, the odd political jibe – the speech is not designed around inspiring rhetoric and poetic speech but is instead a mostly dull, sprawling and a laundry-list of the administration’s legislative and programmatic proposals for the year.<\/p>\n
This is the view of a new analysis by the People’s Assembly<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(PA)\u00a0<\/strong>which notes that the dull structure of the SONA is primarily due to the fact that it is written in mass collaboration by a number of government officials\u00a0\u00a0– including policy advisors, researchers and speech writers \u2013 as well as outside advisors and thinkers.<\/p>\n “Traditionally, the Forum of Director-Generals, the ANC’s January 8th Statement, NEC Lekgotla and the Cabinet Lekgotla play a central role in shaping the speech,” the PA said.<\/p>\n “Meetings are also held with business leaders and labour, which influences the speech. Every government department competes to get their input and projects into the speech.<\/p>\n “The speech goes through an evolutionary process \u2013 words and ideas are added and removed. The rough drafts are sculpted carefully to ensure that every undertaking is supported by practical considerations including available budget. Despite the weeks of drafting, there is still tinkering and fine-tuning happening up to the last day.”<\/p>\n According to the PA, the target audience consists of different constituencies and the president has a balancing act in addressing\u00a0MPs, citizens, trade unions, business leaders, foreign investors, foreign governments and credit rating agencies.<\/p>\n In its analysis the PA found that:<\/p>\n “At the best of times, this is a difficult kind of speech to give,” it said.<\/p>\n “This is even more so in a difficult climate where the challenges are severe and hopes are high. There is also a unique challenge this year with the incoming President delivering this speech only a day\u00a0after being sworn in. ”<\/p>\n\n
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![5,000<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>words.<\/li>\nPresident Mandela’s speeches averaged around 6,000 words<\/li>\nPresident Mbeki speeches\u00a0averaged around 7,000 words.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n“At the best of times, this is a difficult kind of speech to give,” it said.<\/p>\n“This is even more so in a difficult climate where the challenges are severe and hopes are high. There is also a unique challenge this year with the incoming President delivering this speech only a day\u00a0after being sworn in. ”<\/p>\n\nRead:\u00a0How the rand could react to Ramaphosa\u2019s administration over the next 12 months<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The State of the Nation address presents a major moment for any South African president, but there is no denying that the 2018 speech given by Cyril Ramaphosa is special – not least because of the events leading up to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":27589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26,12845],"class_list":["post-226079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline","tag-peoples-assembly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226079"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226111,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226079\/revisions\/226111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/www.pa.org.za\/media_root\/file_archive\/SONA_over_the_years_final.JPG\"){kind=link}