Cyril Ramaphosa’s admission that some lockdown restrictions had been unclear, poorly explained and even contradictory was a powerful step in resetting government’s relationship with the public.

By Busi Mavuso

Eskom grasped the opportunity from lockdown to deal with maintenance issues but its debt is still the biggest sovereign risk to our economy.

It is well past the time to review all of our SOEs and make the necessary reforms to get our focus back on growing this economy in an inclusive manner.

Much is riding in the 2020 Budget speech because a slide into full junk status by Moody’s is a very clear and present danger.

President Cyril Ramaphosa gave a positive SONA 2020 with some real plans to deal with our economic problems. The challenge is implementation.

It is up to President Cyril Ramaphosa to reinvigorate and inspire confidence in South Africans from all walks of life in his SONA.

SA can’t use public pensions as a convenient piggy bank to bail out our indebted SOEs and avoid fundamental reforms.

Prescribed assets, on the surface, may seem to be a quick-fix to Eskom’s problems but that would serve only to guarantee poor returns for pensioners. BLSA argues for some hard decisions to be taken now to ensure long-term sustainability of Eskom and other SOEs.

SAA, through the actions of our political players, is now effectively a privatised, inefficient enterprise, a situation caused by a legacy of bad direction by its shareholder.

With a new leadership team in Eskom now in place, it’s important that the focus remains firmly on what the crux of our electricity challenges is: the inability to meet power demand. Regardless of the changes that may come to the almost 97-year old parastatal, this is its inescapable truth.