RATE IT | Ramaphosa's response to this year's pressing issues

President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Image: GCIS

As South Africa prepares to bid farewell to 2022, we look at President Cyril Ramaphosa's responses to some of the year's issues. 

Several matters were identified and measures arrived at to better South Africans' lives, he said. These ranged from youth job creation to service delivery.

Here are some of his proposed solutions:

Unemployment

Ramaphosa said the Presidential Employment Stimulus programme had reached the milestone of a million participants since its inception.

The scheme was launched in October 2020 to create jobs and support livelihoods as part of assisting economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The programme is contributing to employment creation while the economy takes time to recover and create jobs at the scale we need,” he said in his weekly newsletter.

“As we pursue economic growth to deliver decent and sustainable employment at a much larger scale, we will continue to build on the success of the Presidential Employment Stimulus and expand its reach.”

Service delivery

He called on local government officials to do more to improve service delivery in municipalities and metros.

“As we meet to discuss ways to improve governance and administration, and solve our service delivery challenges, we must focus on solutions.

“After more than two decades of democratic local government and nearly three decades of constitutional democracy, the focus must be more on outcomes and less on intent.  

“We must bridge the divide between policy and implementation, between aspiration and results, by focusing on what must be done,” Ramaphosa said.

Covid-19 grant

Delivering his state of the nation address, the president extended the R350 grant for another year. 

Ramaphosa said the relief should not come at the expense of basic services, given the already constrained fiscus.

There have been growing calls to expand the grant to a basic income grant.

“As much as it has had a substantial impact, we must recognise that we face extreme fiscal constraints. A fiscal crisis would hurt the poor most of all through the deterioration of the basic services on which they rely,” he said.

Fighting corruption

Ramaphosa announced the establishment of a permanent, independent Public Procurement Anti-Corruption Agency to combat corruption, fraud and maladministration.

This body has oversight over parliament and the executive, and is one of the Zondo commission’s recommendations for a redesign and review of the country’s anti-corruption architecture.

“Through the implementation of the actions contained in [the state capture] report, we can start a new chapter and a new leaf in our struggle against corruption. No matter the challenges, we will walk this path together,” said Ramaphosa.

Load-shedding

The president said government was doing what it could to ensure the country was not plunged into stage 8 load-shedding. 

Eskom warned that power cuts would persist during the holiday season and beyond.

Responding to a written parliamentary question from the DA, Ramaphosa said regulations to navigate load-shedding only made provision for stage 8.

Other measures included accelerating procurement of new generation capacity, increasing private investment in electricity generation, enabling businesses and households to invest in rooftop solar and transforming the electricity sector to position it for future sustainability.