Ramaphosa’s SONA will be ‘another round of empty promises,’ says Manyi
MK Party MP Mzwanele Manyi has dismissed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s upcoming State of the Nation Address, saying South Africans will hear nothing new.
Image: Chris Collingridge / Independent Newspapers
MK Party MP Mzwanele Manyi believes President Cyril Ramaphosa's State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday evening will be another round of empty promises.
“Absolutely nothing – we will get the same. There’s nothing fundamental that’s going to be said that has not been said before,” Manyi said.
“It’s going to be another round of empty promises. Last year, we were told that some R940 billion in infrastructure development was going to happen. It didn’t take off the ground.”
All eyes will be on Ramaphosa when he delivers the annual address at Cape Town City Hall at 7pm.
SONA officially opens Parliament and provides the president with a national platform to outline the government’s priorities for the year ahead.
Speaking to SABC News outside City Hall, Manyi said the address would be filled with unfulfilled commitments.
“We were told in 2020 that in Ekurhuleni there’s going to be a university, but it’s still not there. There’s nothing that’s said and happened,” he said.
“We were told there’s going to be a concerted effort to deal with poverty, but if you look at the numbers, poverty is increasing. We were told there’s going to be a concerted effort to deal with unemployment – it has actually risen.
“We were told that we are not going to have load shedding, but they have just rephrased it now to load reductions.
“So we are going to have more of similar vacuous promises. We will not be disappointed at the MK Party because we don’t have any expectations of something proper,” he said.
Manyi also dismissed suggestions that the party was in trouble, saying “the ship was not sinking”.
His remarks come after former Eskom CEO Brian Molefe resigned as an MK Party MP to take up the role of treasurer-general.
The party said the decision was made by its leader, Jacob Zuma.
Molefe was appointed to the position last month.
This marks the second time Molefe has resigned from Parliament.
In 2017, he represented the African National Congress in the National Assembly for about three months before stepping down under a cloud of controversy.
His tenure with the MK Party was longer, having served as an MP for about one year and four months.
His resignation follows a similar move by former Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa CEO Lucky Montana, who also recently resigned as an MK Party MP.
Montana led Prasa during Zuma’s presidency.
Both Molefe and Montana were implicated in the State Capture Report, although neither has been convicted.
Manyi defended the party’s stability and growth.
“The MK Party is the fastest-growing party in town. What is happening in Parliament is just a rearrangement of chairs. What is sinking? There were still 58 (MPs), so everybody attended, the morale was very high,” he said.
“In the MK Party, our preoccupation is not positions, it is the mandate. As long as all people are pushing the mandate, I am here. I’m a former chief whip, I am not dejected, and I am energetic like when I was chief whip.”
Manyi said the party would introduce a bill to amend Section 25 of the Constitution to allow for expropriation without compensation, arguing that the ANC had failed to do so.
“That’s what we are about – we are about policy, we are not about positions,” he said.
“The one in the previous Parliament was not the same thing, that is why most progressive parties did not vote for it. They twisted it from expropriation without compensation to expropriation without nil compensation, something that is not very different.”
“So this time around it is going to be a proper thing. Revolutionary forces will support it and if they don’t, we are going to the ground in the local government elections and tell the people that the people who don’t want to give people the land are these ones,” he added.
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