{"id":811694,"date":"2025-02-17T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=811694"},"modified":"2025-02-17T09:00:59","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T07:00:59","slug":"cyril-ramaphosa-living-in-another-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/811694\/cyril-ramaphosa-living-in-another-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyril Ramaphosa living in another country"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Award-winning economist Dawie Roodt says President Cyril Ramaphosa\u2019s State of the Nation Address (SONA)<\/a> showed that he is out of touch with South Africa\u2019s challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramaphosa delivered his address on 6 February 2025 at the Cape Town City Hall and painted the country as a thriving democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like previous years, he said the government wants to create a nation with a thriving economy that benefits all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramaphosa told the nation they are steadily removing the obstacles to meaningful and faster growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe economic reforms we are implementing through Operation Vulindlela have created a new sense of optimism and confidence in our economy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that the government has made progress in rebuilding and restructuring several network industries and is seeing positive results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These positive results include investment opportunities opening up and being taken by investors, which is leading to job creation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWorking together with business, labour and other social partners, we must now finish this work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOver the coming year, we will initiate a second wave of reform to unleash more rapid and inclusive growth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The immediate focus is to enable Eskom, Transnet and other state-owned enterprises vital to the economy to function optimally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are repositioning these entities to provide world-class infrastructure while enabling competition in operations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe continue with the fundamental reform of our state-owned enterprises to ensure that they can effectively fulfill their social and economic mandates,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes the work underway to implement a new model to strengthen governance and oversight of public entities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramaphosa said these initiatives would create a virtuous cycle of investment, growth, and jobs, lifting economic growth to above 3%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cyril Ramaphosa living in another country<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Economist Dawie Roodt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Renowned economist Dawie Roodt said Ramaphosa\u2019s State of the Nation Address showed that he is out of touch with South Africa’s reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cListening to the President and how well we are living in South Africa and all the things we have achieved, clearly he is living in another country<\/strong>,\u201d Roodt said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe does not realise the reality of the South African economy. We have massive levels of unemployment and poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that the South African economy is not growing and that people have been getting poorer for the past 15 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roodt commended Ramaphosa for touching on the poorly run municipalities which are crucial to South Africa\u2019s economic growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, plans to fix the collapsing local authorities have been mentioned many times before without any good coming from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incompetence and corruption are to blame for municipal mismanagement, and this is where the focus should be to fix them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramaphosa also promised increased infrastructure spending, including unlocking R100 billion in infrastructure financing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe government will spend more than R940 billion on infrastructure over the next three years. This includes R375 billion in spending by state-owned companies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roodt said that although this is positive news, it has been promised many times in the past and has not materialised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most concerning parts of Ramaphosa\u2019s SONA was that he bragged about 60% of the budget going towards social expenditure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It includes more than 28 million unemployed and vulnerable people who receive social grants from the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat is not something to brag about. That is not something to be proud of. We need the economy to grow and to spend less on social expenditure,\u201d Roodt said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy the President got applauded by the members of parliament for people\u2019s huge dependency on the state is something I do not understand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Award-winning economist Dawie Roodt says President Cyril Ramaphosa\u2019s State of the Nation Address shows that he is out of touch with South Africa\u2019s challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":807568,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1293,1459,17255,20306],"class_list":["post-811694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-cyril-ramaphosa","tag-dawie-roodt","tag-operation-vulindlela","tag-state-of-the-nation-address-sona"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811694","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=811694"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":812218,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811694\/revisions\/812218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}