Rhetoric of Progress vs. Lived Reality In his address, the President declared: “We are stronger today than we were a year ago. Our economy is growing again.” From a left standpoint, the central question must be posed: stronger for whom? The speech points to primary fiscal surpluses, investor confidence, and a surging stock market, which has reportedly grown by 61% in US dollar terms against GDP growth of just 1%, as markers of progress. Yet these macro-financial indicators stand in stark contradiction to the lived experience of the working class. Unemployment remains structurally entrenched, with deindustrialisation accelerating under the weight of cheap imports and collapsing productive capacity.
Youth unemployment persists at catastrophic levels, while inequality remains among the highest in the world. Working-class communities continue to face water outages, escalating electricity tariffs, crime, hunger, and the breakdown of local government services.
A rising stock exchange, buoyed largely by gold and platinum price hikes, does not translate into rising household incomes. Likewise, primary budget surpluses do not reflect expanded public services, but rather the opposite, since they are achieved through the curtailment of social spending.
SAFTU’s expectation was clear: growth without redistribution deepens inequality.
Fiscal Surplus and the Politics of Austerity
The President proudly announces that “We have achieved two consecutive primary budget surpluses.” From a left ideological perspective, this is not a neutral technical achievement but a political choice rooted in austerity economics.
Primary surpluses signify the prioritisation of debt servicing over social investment, even where loans were incurred through corrupt infrastructure projects such as Eskom’s power plants and Transnet’s locomotive procurements. Social spending remains constrained, public-sector vacancies frozen, and municipal infrastructure left to decay. Critical posts for nurses, teachers, and police officers remain unfilled.
SAFTU’s expectation had been for expansionary fiscal policy, one that would fill public vacancies, rebuild healthcare and education systems, and restore municipal capacity. Instead, SONA celebrates fiscal consolidation, reinforcing the neoliberal framework that has entrenched mass unemployment for over a decade. “Inclusive Growth” Without Structural Transformation The President outlines the Government of National Unity’s priorities as driving inclusive growth, reducing poverty, and tackling the cost of living. Yet the speech is conspicuously silent on structural economic transformation.
SAFTU had expected commitments to reindustrialisation, protection against factory closures, crackdowns on illicit trade, strategic public procurement for localisation, and expanded public ownership in strategic sectors. Instead, the speech leans heavily on public-private partnerships, private investment, infrastructure bonds, port concessions, and market liberalisation. Such measures deepen financialization and private sector dependence rather than advancing democratic economic control. In the context of persistently high interest rates, infrastructure financed through debt and private profit guarantees will burden future generations rather than build sovereign productive capacity. Operation Vulindlela and Neoliberal Reform The President hails Operation Vulindlela as a driver of economic reform. From SAFTU’s perspective, this programme represents the restructuring of network industries along market lines. Energy liberalisation, Eskom unbundling, private transmission entry, and concessioning in rail and ports signal creeping privatisation. The language of competition and private investment dominates policy discourse, displacing the role of public ownership.
SAFTU had expected public-sector-led transformation, democratic control over energy, and worker protections in restructuring processes. Instead, unbundling without robust public safeguards risks entrenching electricity apartheid, where affluent areas enjoy uninterrupted supply while working-class communities endure “load reduction.” Water Crisis: Systemic Failure of Local Government The President acknowledges that water has become the single most pressing issue for many communities, attributing the crisis to poor planning, inadequate maintenance, and municipal dysfunction. From a left standpoint, this diagnosis is incomplete. Municipal collapse is rooted in austerity budgets, capacity erosion, outsourcing, patronage networks, and neoliberal governance frameworks. Rising service tariffs, especially electricity, compound municipal financial distress, while extreme poverty limits revenue collection. Wealthier consumers exiting municipal grids through solar adoption further erodes cross-subsidisation models without reversing fiscal strangulation, crisis committees will merely manage decline rather than resolve systemic failure.
Crime, Militarisation and Social Roots
The deployment of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to combat gang violence reflects a securitised response to social breakdown.
While organised crime is real, it is inseparable from unemployment, spatial apartheid, inequality, and economic exclusion. Militarised responses risk criminalising poverty rather than addressing its structural roots. Past deployments from the Cape Flats to COVID-19 lockdown enforcement demonstrated the dangers of securitising social crises without socio-economic transformation.
Social Relief of Distress (SRD) Grant The extension of the SRD grant is acknowledged, yet its proposed redesign raises concerns. SAFTU’s expectation was the conversion of the SRD into a permanent Basic Income Grant, raised to the food poverty line, and made unconditional. Shifting the grant toward “livelihood pathways” risks narrowing access rather than expanding social protection, undermining its role as a poverty alleviation instrument. Employment Stimulus vs. Real Jobs The President cites the creation of over 2.5 million opportunities through the Presidential Employment Stimulus. However, these opportunities are temporary, low-paid, and outside formal labour protections. From a left perspective, short-term public employment cannot substitute for structural job creation. South Africa requires industrial employment anchored in productive sectors, not perpetual precarity through stop-gap programmes BEE Review Without Class Lens The announced review of Black Economic Empowerment is framed as strengthening transformation. SAFTU’s critique is that elite BEE has enriched a narrow black capitalist stratum without altering ownership patterns or reducing inequality.
Transformation must advance worker ownership, public ownership, cooperative development, and democratic planning, not recycle elite accumulation. Foreign Policy and Sovereignty The President’s assertion that South Africa will not be bullied globally is welcomed in principle, particularly regarding solidarity with Palestine and opposition to imperial domination. However, sovereignty must extend beyond diplomacy to economic, industrial, and fiscal autonomy. Trade dependencies, commodity export reliance, and vulnerability to dumping undermine true sovereignty. The pursuit of new trade concessions, fossil fuel import commitments, and inadequate intra-African trade finance further weakens strategic independence.
South Africa’s global role must center on social justice, rule of law, and solidarity with oppressed peoples, not geopolitical alignment with authoritarian or extractivistblocs. The Government of National Unity (GNU) The President frames the GNU as evidence of democratic maturity. From a left perspective, it represents policy continuity with intensified neoliberal features, particularly reflecting business interests aligned with coalition partners. Rather than transforming macroeconomic policy, the GNU consolidates austerity, privatization, and market liberalization while marginalising working-class alternatives. Stability without transformation entrenches inequality. The Core Contradiction The President speaks of unity, growth, reform, and stability. Yet the central contradiction remains unresolved: South Africa continues to face structural unemployment, deep inequality, and accelerating deindustrialization without radical redistribution, large-scale public investment, reindustrialization, the end of austerity, and democratic control of strategic sectors, the promised era of prosperity risks becoming prosperity for capital alone.
SAFTU’s Position A stronger South Africa requires transforming the extractivist economic structure inherited from colonial apartheid toward meeting the basic needs of the people. It demands expansionary fiscal policy, lower interest rates, tighter exchange controls, and the filling of all public service vacancies. Industrial defence against factory closures, a permanent Basic Income Grant, democratic public ownership in energy and logistics, and a crackdown on illicit trade are essential. Genuine participatory economic planning must replace investor-led growth models. Growth must be worker-led and redistribution-driven. Only then will constitutional promises become lived realities for the working class, women, youth, the elderly, LGBTQI+ communities, migrants, and all those who remain structurally marginalised.
Issued on behalf of the SAFTU General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
For media inquiries, contact the National Spokesperson at:
Newton Masuku
newtonm@saftu.org.za
0661682157
Media Officer
Asive Dyani
0719019564
