Parliament – President Jacob Zuma’s last State of the Nation Address as leader of the ANC is expected to be watched closely by business and labour on whether it will deliver on some of the targets.
Despite this, Zuma will reflect on progress made by his government in the last year.
When he took over as head of state in 2009 Zuma highlighted the trajectory the country and the targets it will have to achieve.
The country has been under severe financial strain in the past eight years of his term of office. When Zuma assumed office in 2009 he set a target of 5 percent economic growth by 2019.
But this has not been achieved, instead the country is facing a difficult economic period with the economy struggling to grow.
The economy has not grown beyond 2 percent during that period, and the forecast by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and National Treasury has put growth for last year to less than 1 percent.
This after the figure was revised from 1.5 percent during the beginning of 2016 to the end of the year.
These institutions have also forecast more than 2 percent economic growth next year and beyond 2019. The last time South Africa averaged 4 percent growth was before 2008, and since then the economy has been bleeding.
The mining sector has been shedding most of the jobs and it has bled more than 40 000 jobs in the past six years. The latest figures from Statistics South Africa showed that unemployment was still sitting at 27 percent, with the youth mostly affected.
The slump in commodity prices in the mining sector has led to Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel and Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies to call for the diversification in the economy.
The South African economy has been relying on the mining sector for years, and despite the commodity situation improving following the recovery the government still wants investments in other sectors of the economy.
However, the threats of a credit downgrade also added to the country’s woes.
Despite surviving this scare last December credit rating agencies warned that failure to implement structural reforms in the economy and political instability could lead to a downgrade.
Zuma has been in a proxy war with Gordhan, but the president has denied this. The country has however managed to rein in expenditure in government with Gordhan cutting costs by billions of rands.
Last year the expenditure ceiling was put at R25 billion for the next three years, and more money was expected to be saved.
However, Zuma introduced the National Development Plan with clear targets.
The government is battling to create jobs and fund higher education.
Before the #FeesMustFall campaign two years ago the Department of Higher Education said it would need R51bn in three years to fund free education. The Fees Commission is currently investigating the feasibility and modalities for this.
But the ANC has said it would not be possible to fund all university students, a cap would be set for the needy students. The ANC said even the Freedom Charter stipulates that free education would be given on merit, but the government has gone beyond that.
In 2009 Zuma introduced a massive infrastructure programme to overhaul the state.
He announced that R847bn would be spent in three years to fund the infrastructure programme including rail, roads, dams and telecommunications. This was part of the government’s ambitious R4 trillion investment in infrastructure over the next 15 years.
Zuma has also been under pressure to rein in State-Owned Entities. The government has spent more than R467bn in bailouts on SOEs over the last 15 years.
Gordhan said this was unsustainable and SOEs needed to find mechanisms to have a strong balance sheet. The government is currently introducing a Bill to overhaul SOE governance.
They want to create a seamless method in the appointment of SOE Boards and payment of salaries for heads of these entities. SAA has been singled out as one entity that has been in a crisis for a number of years.