The state of the province address (Sopa) is an opportunity for the premier to highlight achievements over the past year, to give an honest assessment of provincial challenges, and to provide a concrete, measurable map towards better outcomes for the year ahead on political, economic and social issues.
Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane’s Sopa was understandably short on his government’s achievements, though he did his best to paint a silver lining around what has been a dark cloud of a year.
He spoke with apparent pride of maintaining the 84% matric pass rate without noting it amounted to the worst educational performance in the entire country.
He described the unemployment rate as a “difficult statistic” without really unpacking the reality of the province not only having the highest rate of unemployment but also that it is getting worse rather than better.
It shed 79,000 jobs last year alone. Behind those “difficult statistics” is half an adult population that has given up on any hope of being able to get a job.
As for solutions — there weren’t too many practicable ones.
He said government was determined to reverse the unemployment trend but did not really spell out how it intended to do so. He simply outlined how government itself was trying to create at least temporary employment through training, infrastructure projects and its Labour Activation Programme.
But, government should not be in the business of creating jobs but rather facilitating a consistent and predictable policy, learning and physical environment that encourages investment, entrepreneurship and development through the private sector.
That can never happen in a climate of dysfunctional local governance — something Mabuyane glossed over.
Industry takes its business to where local governments can deliver basic services. And there are few such towns in the Eastern Cape.,
This province needs consistently professional, effective local governance.
Mabuyane’s solution of sending in the provincial and national teams to intervene and apply temporary patches to haemorrhaging local governance won’t work.
Repeated interventions in several municipalities show that dysfunctionality returns before the ink on the never-to-be implemented financial turnaround plan has dried.
Mabuyane said his government had delivered more than 4,000 houses in 2025, but failed to mention how it would do better next year in a province with a whopping 774,700 housing backlog.
He was just as unrealistic about addressing the health provision crisis. He spoke eloquently of developing specialist care capability at hospitals.
But he did not speak of the health department’s crippling R40bn contingent liability from medical negligence claims or that pharmaceutical companies — collectively owed more than R1bn — are cutting off its medicine supplies.
All in all, the Sopa was all form but little substance. One can only hope the budget speech will add a bit more meat to the Sopa’s very bare bones.
Daily Dispatch
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