SONA 2026: The “Green Shoots” Narrative and the Politics of Stagnant Hope

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to skip Davos to prepare for the 2026 State of the Nation Address (SONA) is rich in symbolism. It suggests a leader turning inward, focusing on a nation at a crossroads. Yet, symbolism has become the currency of a presidency increasingly defined by a gaping chasm between rhetorical assurance and tangible, structural resolve. As SONA 2026 approaches, the question isn’t what new plans will be announced, but whether this address will break from a well-established pattern: the performance of governance over the grit of transformation.

The Script of Managed Decline

Ramaphosa’s recent SONAs reveal a consistent script. SONA 2023 acknowledged energy and logistics crises as transitional hurdles, deploying task teams and partnerships as antidotes to systemic failure. SONA 2024, ahead of elections, leaned into populist pledges on jobs and relief, offering aspirations devoid of credible pathways. SONA 2025, delivered under an unprecedented coalition government, sanitised ideological incoherence into a virtue of “unity” and “pragmatism.”

The pattern is clear: diagnosis without disruption, reform without rupture. This legacy of “managed reassurance” now directly shapes the narrative awaiting us in 2026.

The “Green Shoots” Illusion

SONA 2026 will undoubtedly trumpet emerging “green shoots.” Expect citations of:

• Improved energy availability due to Eskom’s operational gains and private renewables.

• Technocratic progress via Operation Vulindlela in logistics and licensing.

• A dip in official unemployment to 31.9% and roughly 250,000 new, largely temporary, construction jobs.

• An S&P credit rating upgrade, modest GDP growth, and stabilising public debt.

This curated narrative, however, masks a starker reality. Economists point out that real GDP per capita has declined for nearly a decade, with South Africa projected by the IMF to be the only country facing further declines in 2025 and 2026. Real disposable income for the middle class has plummeted by an estimated 53% since 2016. The celebrated energy “stability” often reflects state withdrawal, not reform. Job growth is episodic and fails to address mass structural unemployment.

These are not the metrics of recovery; they are the artifacts of stagnation management. The “green shoots” narrative is a political performance, designed to insulate a fragile Grand Coalition from confronting a growth model that enriches established capital while leaving township economies and productive restructuring behind.

The Foreign Policy Fault Lines

The politics of pretence extend beyond our borders. SONA 2026 will invoke constitutionalism and multilateralism, but these principles are straining under coalition contradictions. Divergent loyalties among partners have created a hesitant, compromised foreign policywhether regarding sanctions, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Ukraine, or balancing BRICS with Western alliances. The result is often collateral damage: a foreign posture born of fragile compromise, not principled statecraft.

A Test of Courage, Not Competence

South Africa’s crisis is not a deficit of plans, but a deficit of conviction. We do not need another inventory of intentions. We need leadership willing to name failure with moral clarity, to confront the vested interests that paralyse progress, and to risk political capital for structural change.

If SONA 2026 merely rehearses the familiar liturgy of incremental progress and statistical green shoots, it will confirm the deepest public suspicion: that the presidency has mastered the art of speaking change while governing continuity. In the absence of reckoning, it will be remembered not as a turning point, but as another meticulously staged performance in the long, corrosive politics of pretence.

{Source: IOL}

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