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As the country prepares itself for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) this evening, we cannot forget the multitude of promises he made in his first SONA, which the failing ANC government has been unable to realise.

Ramaphosa’s SONA will be a sobering reminder of a State of No Action, where our people continue to be subjected to an endless loop of the same old ANC, and its cold, empty promises.

The Ramaphosa-administration has become characterised by an inherent deficit of action and results.

At his first SONA, Ramaphosa promised the nation a New Dawn, this Dawn is now nothing more than a pipe dream of empty promises and a president of no action, who merely works for the ANC and does not lead it.

Some of Ramaphosa’s broken promises from his past SONA include:

• The creation of jobs, especially for the youth. The reality is that under the Ramaphosa administration, 25 000 more people were left unemployed in 2018 than in 2017;
• The acceleration of the land redistribution programme to redress the historical injustices and to bring more producers into the agricultural sector. Sadly, the national government’s failure rate of land reform projects now stands at 92%;
• The National Health Insurance (NHI) project was set to be rolled out in April 2018, a scheme which experienced abysmal failure in its pilot stage. If a pilot project is unsuccessful, there is no chance that the NHI will be successful nationally;
• The introduction of a Youth Crime Prevention Strategy to empower and support young people to be self-sufficient and become involved in crime fighting initiatives - however, instead of providing solutions, the Ramaphosa-administration opted to host a Youth Crime Consultative Summit in mid-2018, without regarding any long-term solutions to crime prevention;
• The distribution of resources to police station level which would include personnel and other resources. The reality is that the police service remains under-resourced and under-capacitated. Furthermore, the national ratio of police officers to population increased from 1:369 in 2016/17 to 1:375 in 2017/18;
• Stabilising and revitalising state-owned enterprises through decisive interventions. Yet, loss-making and bloated parastatals still require large bail-outs and loans, turning SOE’s into black holes into which billions of Rands of tax payers’ money is poured;

These broken promises are proof of a president who has no vision and no political will to fix the problems facing our country. Ramaphosa is simply a different driver of the same broken ANC bus.

South Africans do not need workshops and summits. We need leadership and decisive action. There is urgency needed to pull millions of South Africans out of the desperation of poverty and unemployment.

The sobering reality is that the State of the Nation is bleak and seems to have worsened under President Ramaphosa.

South Africans will today quickly realise that Cyril Ramaphosa is unable to turn South Africa round and that the DA is the only party that can Build One South Africa for All and bring tangible change.

Issued by The DA