THE REAL STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS
Tonight at 19:00 President Cyril Ramaphosa will deliver another State of the Nation Address (SONA). On the face of it, the SONA is meant to be a singular, sober moment for a country’s leader to account to the nation — to set out policy direction, acknowledge failures and chart a credible path forward. Yet after decades of South African SONAs, the ritual has become an expensive theatrical spectacle that too often obscures reality rather than illuminates it.
The price of performance
This year Parliament reports a R7-million price tag for SONA. That figure — largely driven by broadcasting and event costs — is unacceptable in a country where millions of households face hunger, unemployment hovers at catastrophic levels and basic services fail in too many communities. R7 million spent on staging a speech is R7 million not spent on sanitation, clinic staffing, school maintenance, or food and shelter for the most vulnerable. It is not merely wasteful; it displays a grotesque mismatch of priorities.
The spectacle and its toll
SONA has evolved into a political funfair: elaborate sets, television lighting and camera arrays, party delegations in choreographed rows, sartorial display and the Ritualized pageantry of “opposition” theatrics. Media outlets and official TV crews Mobilize at great cost. Politicians use the occasion to project image and stagecraft rather than to foster sober accountability. This Theatricalization transforms a civic exchange into a televised fashion show and PR exercise, while the country’s structural crises remain largely unchanged.
A practice that Normalizes spin
History shows that SONAs have too often been vehicles for spin and political rhetoric. Presidents have used them to paint rosier pictures of economic health and social progress than the lived reality suggests. Repeatedly, promises announced with great fanfare have not been matched by delivery. When national addresses become a forum for optimistic framing rather than rigorous, evidence-based accounting, public trust erodes. The result is predictably familiar: disappointment, cynicism and the steady erosion of democratic legitimacy.
Corruption, credibility and leadership
South Africa’s post-1994 trajectory has been blighted by governance failures, corruption and deepening inequality. Multiple commissions and inquiries have exposed misconduct and looting of public resources by people in positions of power. In that context, the SONA stage — where political elites parade themselves before cameras and taxpayers — becomes especially distasteful. The nation need not be treated to displays of extravagance by those who have been implicated in wrongdoing or who cannot credibly demonstrate stewardship of the public purse.
There are specific controversies that compound this problem. Public reporting and investigations in recent years have raised serious questions about incidents that implicate senior figures; such matters demand full transparency and accountability, not the gloss of a televised spectacle. Meanwhile, inflammatory claims circulating in and beyond political circles — for example, exaggerated narratives about a “white genocide” — have sown division and diplomatic friction, including tensions with international partners. Individuals who propagate knowingly false or misleading claims, or who appear to incite separationist movements (for example in the Western Cape), should be investigated and, if applicable, held to account under the law. Good governance requires that the state defend the constitutional order and protect social cohesion.
SONA’s lost opportunity
If the SONA is to be relevant, it must be more than a speech and less a ritual. It should be a vehicle for transparent accounting, measurable commitments and immediate, verifiable follow-up. Instead, too many addresses have stayed at the level of slogans and announcements without clear budgets, timelines or mechanisms to monitor implementation. That pattern is not merely disappointing: it is costly in human terms.
A better alternative
South Africans do not need an extravagant stage to hear the president. A stripped-back, low-cost model would preserve the constitutional and democratic purpose of the address while saving scarce public funds. Imagine a concise televised address from a modest setting — the presidential office — live-streamed and complemented by accessible briefing documents, clear measurable targets, and an independent monitoring mechanism to track progress. The saved funds should be redirected to tangible service delivery or community relief initiatives.
Final word
South Africa’s challenges are structural, deep and urgent: persistently high unemployment, worsening inequality, service delivery failures, entrenched corruption and a rise in social and political tensions. The ritual of an extravagant SONA evening does nothing to fix these; if anything, it Normalizes spectacle over substance. In a nation still healing from a fraught political and socioeconomic history, and in the face of everyday hardship for millions, spending millions of taxpayers’ rands on a theatrical extravaganza to deliver a speech is indefensible.
If the State of the Nation is to mean anything at all, it must become an exercise in transparency, accountability and restraint — not an annual public relations gala funded by citizens who expect, understandably, that their leaders will prioritize their basic needs over pomp. Tonight’s address should be a sober commitment to concrete, measurable action — and a reminder that the true state of the nation is not declared from a stage, but judged by the lives and living conditions of its people.