ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba has poured cold water on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA).
Mashaba says Ramaphosa is out of touch with the realities faced by millions of South Africans.
Ramaphosa delivered his State of the Nation Address on Thursday evening at the Cape Town City Hall.
He says Ramaphosa should have sought advices before making unrealistic promises.
“For South Africa to actually turn the tide of high unemployment, we need a minimum of 5% [economic growth]. Anything under 5%, you are not going to reverse the current high unemployment rate. A minimum of 5% doesn’t happen just because you go to church, it happens after identifying ways of creating employment,” explains Mashaba.
During his address, the President said government is busy will finalising a modernised and comprehensive industrial policy that drives economic growth.
“We will achieve this ambition by focusing on the opportunities in localisation, diversification, digitisation and decarbonisation. We are working towards the full implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area, which will tear down the barriers to trade on our continent.”
However, Mashaba says if government is serious about job creation it must revive industrial factories that will drive economic growth and job creation.
“As a country, we are sitting with factories that are vandalised and laying empty. I started manufacturing hair products in 1985 in Ga-Rankuwa. That industrial area was world-class, but go look at it now – it has been vandalised.”
The President says renewable energy and green manufacturing can help create jobs.
“With an abundance of cheap, green energy, we can produce products that are competitive anywhere in the world and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the process.”
Unemployment rate among the highest in the world at 32.1%.
