President Zuma’s 2017 State of Nation Address: Not Much Inspiration, and Much Humiliation, Insults, Pepper Gas and Eviction

SOUTH AFRICA - In Brief 09 Feb 2017 by Iraj Abedian

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President Zuma’s State of Nation Addresses (SONA) 2017 was a lot more dramatic than his 2016. His speech was delayed by an hour due to melodramatic, eventful, violent and humiliating display of political theatrics. Armed with last year’s Constitutional Court’s judgement that President Zuma had violated his oath of office, inside the Parliament, political parties- led by Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)- insisted on demonstrating disrespect for him, hurling insults and piling humiliation on a president whom they regard as a ‘constitutional delinquent’ on the one hand, and demanding accountability to the country’s Constitution from the Parliament on the other. Once again, this year, EFF members of the Parliaments (MPs) were violently removed from the Parliament , some beaten badly, whilst the Democratic Alliance MPs and the Cope MPs were ordered out of the opening session by the Speaker of the Parliament for their accusation that the Speaker of the Parliament was not protecting the integrity of the Parliament. When the democratic theatrics finally ended, the President’s statement was nothing short of underwhelming: a bland blend of administrative details and a set of half-baked policy intentions to appease the populist wing of his political base- all under the rubric of “radical socio-economic transformation” which has become the ANC’s response to the political narrative championed by the EFF. The president promised a series of legislative interventions to help reduce the level of industrial concentration, accelerate black economic empowerment via sharp increases in black business access to the public sector supply chain opportunities. And, of course, a promise that land ...