It has become customary for government communications to focus on activities such as the number of job opportunities created, youth entrepreneurs funded and businesses rescued. These are merely outputs. What we really need to worry about is the impact and outcomes of government policies and programmes. To what extent are government's policies and activities achieving strategic goals like lowering unemployment and poverty as well as National Development Plan targets?
The more I listen to #SONA the more I think the speeches are notable for what the president doesn't and can't say rather than what he does. It's a new year, a new set of top priorities and another rattling off of figures. Does it really matter?
Oversight is the most important role of Parliament, holding the executive to account and calling on the president and ministers to answer for their decisions and conduct. There are very clear signs that the oversight function in South Africa is failing.
Just as the ANC was preparing to contest the 1994 general elections, it released a document titled Ready to Govern. In it outlined the principles, values and policy focus of a prospective ANC government. The party has been in government ever since. After just over 25 years in government, an evaluation of the ANC's governance performance could lead one to question whether the title of the document was more aspirational than it was a reflection of reality.
Nation building is both a practical exercise as well as an ideal. It is about defining a unifying identity, collective goals and the common good and interest of a nation. South Africa is a case of a bitterly divided society embarking on the thorny journey of establishing a new sense of nationhood and how pervasive inequality and the betrayal of the good will of the country's majority threatens to reverse the gains already made.
Land reform. It can't be ignored, it can't be avoided and it certainly can't be postponed forever, as part of redressing the injustices of the past. But what kind of land reform does South Africa need? Is section 25 of the constitution (the property clause) really a barrier to effective land reform? Is land expropriation without compensation the best solution? Why has the policy of willing buyer/ willing seller not worked?
The year 1994 is widely considered as the year South Africa finally delivered freedom to the black and African majority after centuries of oppression under colonial and apartheid regimes. However, South African society remains deeply violent and the trauma of the past remains evident in the present situation in the country. Nomfundo Mogapi, Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation argues that South Africa is a wounded nation and until and unless it grapples with the psychosocial effects of apartheid, freedom will remain elusive.
What will it take to transform South African society? The struggle was contested and so is transformation. Ultimately it's about the balance of power politically, economically and socially.
At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) perpetrators of apartheid atrocities participated in a truth telling exercise in exchange for amnesty and the envisioned result was reconciliation. But there exists a strong sentiment that justice was glaringly omitted from these proceedings.
I'm passionate about enabling the agency of individuals and communities and creating conditions where they can reach their fullest potential. I see it as my mission to inspire, inform and influence decisions and actions towards achieving this ideal, through critical thinking.