If you’ve ever wanted to know if President Jacob Zuma kept to the commitments made in past State Of The Nation Addresses, Africa Check has the answers.
The non-profit data journalism organisation has sifted through the president’s#SONA speeches dating back from the first back in 2009 to examine whether or not there has been any progress since a number of commitments were made.
Using publicly available information, Africa Check looked up commitments highlighted by Zuma in education, water, jobs, crime and women.
According to gathered data, the commitment made to creating four million job opportunities by 2014 under the second phase of the Expanded Public Works Programme is the only one that has been fulfilled.
Those related to water are still in progress are scheduled to be met by the 2017/18 financial year, while those relating to education are still in progress, with many falling far behind their deadlines.
Commitments made to tackling crime and issues around women’s reproductive health have not been achieved with the number of police officials not being increased as stated and women and girls’ programmes remaining grounded.
You can read up on all the promises made and their updates on Africa Check’s website.
htxt.africa did a bit of digging as well to check up on a few key promises made last year and this is what we came up with:
- The promise to stabilise Eskom’s finances: Government did deliver on it’s promise to give Eskom R23 billion to help with its revenue woes, however, this has seemingly not done much to stabilise the national utility, as it’s recently applied to hike electricity fees by an additional 8% this year, due to lower than expected revenue in 2015
- Smart ID card bank applications: President Zuma announced that citizens will be able to apply for a new ID or passport at certain banks around the country. The pilot phase of this process was launched in July last year to bank employees, but is yet to be opened to the public.
- President Zuma had promised to deliver free broadband in eight municipalities last year: Unfortunately, this was halted last year due to a number of issues including the appointment of a service provider and reallocation of funds.
#SONA2016 will be broadcast live from Parliament tonight at 7pm.
[Image – CC 2.0 by Government ZA]