SMAC brought you the platitudes of Cyril in 2022 with SONA se Moer and the sounds of a sinking ship in Sonar 2023 – RSA Titania.  SMAC now confidently brings you SONA, Yet So Far before Cyril even steps up to the podium and ponderously ponders on highpoints of yet another ANC annus horribilis.

It’s that time of the year again, the State of the Nation Address – SONA for short or SOTNA for long since the EFFalumpen proles would routinely trash all rules of parliamentary discourse for an hour in the past with their childish behaviour which they believe is clever political theatre.  They would get into everyone’s faces until the Speaker lost patience and they were manhandled outside.  With the instigators-in-chief banned this year, proceedings should get off to a much smoother start. 

Here, SMAC will make his first prediction.  Since red is the EFFalumps’ colour, and since their main stirrers are banned from the Big Brother House, they will colonise the red carpet which is normally the purview of the overdressed and undercooked ANC MPs.  There they will misbehave as normal.

In the past the ANC teamed up with COSATU and the SACP to form the Tripartite Alliance.  This soon became a three-ring circus which has dwindled to a tawdry one-ring circus as the ANC’s partners’ fortunes flagged.  Along the way it lost its committed intellectuals and is now mainly populated by clowns, a gangsta wannabe, fools, incompetents, charlatans and squatters of no fixed abode.  It currently seems leaderless although it has Cyril who is that extra clown who is just part of the general clumsiness of it all.  He is mostly in the background trying to ride his unicycle and but keeps falling off.  Every now and again, he makes a short appearance in the front only to bumble off again on some vague mission.

Cyril has a tough sell this year.  Every year since 1994 they have aimed for the stars but peed on our shoes instead.  The cupboard is now bare of even empty promises.  Eskom continues to wreak havoc in the economy, Transnet can’t get exports to the ports and Portnet can’t land imports at them.  The national medical system is providing ever fewer services of increasingly dubious quality.  PRASA has completely capitulated to the murderous taxi industry.  Internationally the ANC has sided with dictatorships and murderous regimes who wouldn’t know a human right even if it gave them a snot klap and has ignored the countries that actually provided us with significant aid, trade pacts and investments for 30 years.

The ANC cast around for something to make themselves relevant again.  The Gaza issue was readymade for it. Cyril will no doubt misrepresent the minor victory in the International Court of Justice and will trumpet this success to show how committed the ANC is to human rights and values.  Let us not forget that this is the organisation that strongly supported the murderous and corrupt Mugabe for 37 years.  Let us also not forget that this is the organisation under whose watch we now have a murder rate higher than all countries except for narco states and we match Gaza and the Ukraine with our annual murder rate.

Nationally, with nothing to offer the proletariat, Cyril will most likely celebrate the only positive statistic that they, and only they, could roll out social grants to 45% of the population.  He made a big deal of this during the ANC’s birthday bash and will push it again.  Has anyone pointed out that this is actually celebrating failure – failure to grow the economy so that you need fewer social grants and, those that you do provide, are not piffling amounts.  Most middle-class and even lower middle-class households spend more on dogfood than the R350 Social Relief of Distress grant.  The other high point which Cyril will dwell upon is the record Matric pass rate.  Unfortunately, that stat belies the fact that SA’s reading, writing and maths skills probably rank in the bottom 1/3 internationally.

With the NHS all but collapsed and no more taxes to be had, Cyril will outline the play for the NHI this year where they will raid the Medical Aid System to finally provide an equitable medical service – equally shyte for everyone.

Don’t hold your breath that Cyril and the ANC will provide any answers.  It should be a snorefest as usual.