CHARLES MATSEKE | From State of the Nation to Republic of Commissions: SA's playhouse of accountability

By now, South Africans know the script.

Another February. Another carefully choreographed address. Another round of promises about growth, jobs, crime and renewal. And once again, under Cyril Ramaphosa, the country gathered to hear what increasingly feels less like a State of the Nation Address (SONA) and more like a State of Managed Decline.

Or perhaps we should call it what it is: a performance in a Republic of Commissions.

The 2026 SONA arrived with familiar hymns; economic recovery, service delivery, social cohesion yet conspicuously absent was any serious reckoning with South Africa’s developmental state agenda or Vision 2030. That deadline is now only four years away.

The developmental state, once the African National Congress (ANC)’s great intellectual promise, has become a dream deferred, perhaps even a dream denied.

This erosion is not abstract. It is lived daily. In the last local government elections, households were terrorised by load shedding.

As the next electoral cycle approaches, a new anxiety has replaced darkness: taps running dry. Entire communities face prolonged water outages while politicians rehearse slogans about infrastructure renewal.

The governing party’s disregard for voters is most apparent not in speeches, but in absence of water, safety, employment, dignity and accountability.

Instead of delivery, we are offered inquiries. Instead of outcomes, oversight. Instead of governance, process.

South Africa today is defined less by coherent policy than by an expanding archive of commissions of inquiry: from the historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission to the Marikana Commission, the sprawling Zondo Commission, the Nugent Commission, and the deeply controversial Seriti Commission.

Now we add newer probes: the Madlanga Commission, renewed TRC case investigations under Khampepe, and provincial inquiries into urban decay and deadly “bad buildings”. Each responds to a real crisis. But collectively they expose a darker pattern: a state that investigates endlessly yet struggles to execute decisively.

We have become a country that diagnoses more than it cures.

This condition was captured with biting clarity by Zapiro in a political cartoon published by the Daily Maverick, titled “MSONA.” The visual joke; “when the real leaks aren’t in the pipes” cuts deeper than humour. It suggests that South Africa’s crisis is not merely infrastructural. The leaks are institutional, moral and strategic.

Cartoons, unlike policy briefs, tell uncomfortable truths quickly. Zapiro’s satire frames SONA not as a governing moment but as political theatre where messaging flows freely while accountability remains blocked. The pipes may burst, but the real failures run through procurement systems, party patronage networks and hollowed-out State capacity.

That satire lands because it resonates.

This week’s parliamentary debate held across overflow venues such as the Nieuwmeester Parking Dome in Cape Town, offers MPs an opportunity to interrogate presidential priorities: economic recovery, crime, SANDF deployments, service delivery, and the much-vaunted National Dialogue. On paper, this is democracy in action. In practice, it often feels ritualistic.

Opposition parties criticise. The governing party defends. The President replies. Committees promise oversight.

And then?

What follows is usually a slow fade into bureaucratic inertia.

The National Dialogue, supposedly a platform for confronting poverty, inequality and social fragmentation, now risks becoming another procurement channel, another elite networking exercise dressed up as participatory governance.

Meanwhile, crime statistics climb. Gender-based violence remains endemic. Human Development Index gains stagnate. Municipal capacity continues to collapse.

There is no clear centre of power in foreign or domestic policy. Any senior party figure feels licensed to speak on behalf of the state during international crises, blurring institutional authority and exposing governance incoherence.

The deeper issue is philosophical.

SONA assumes a functioning developmental state. But development requires coordination, discipline and long-term planning. South Africa today operates more like an improvisational polity: reactive rather than strategic, fragmented rather than integrated. Policies are announced without implementation pathways. Targets are declared without enforcement mechanisms.

In this environment, commissions become substitutes for leadership.

Yes, inquiries matter. They surface truths. They document wrongdoing. But they are not engines of transformation. A country cannot audit its way into prosperity.

This is the uncomfortable debate South Africa avoids: have we quietly accepted a model where accountability is outsourced to panels, while political consequences evaporate?

The ANC continues to invoke liberation legitimacy while presiding over administrative decay. Electoral cycles are treated as communication challenges rather than moments of reckoning. Voters are offered narratives instead of results. And the state increasingly governs through symbolism, addresses, dialogues and frameworks rather than through material change.

SONA, in theory, should be a strategic compass. In practice, it has become a ceremonial checkpoint in a system drifting without direction.

The tragedy is that South Africans are not apathetic. They are exhausted.

They understand satire because they live its reality. They know that leaks are not only in pipes, but in procurement. That crime is not only on the streets, but in boardrooms. That inequality is not accidental, but structured. And that commissions, however necessary, cannot replace political courage.

So where is the real debate taking place?

Not only in Parliament. It is happening in queues for water. In darkened townships. In overcrowded clinics. In households calculating food prices against stagnant incomes. It is happening wherever citizens ask whether this democracy still knows how to govern itself.

Unless the state reclaims strategic capacity, unless Vision 2030 is treated as an operational mandate rather than a rhetorical flourish. South Africa risks entrenching a new normal: a republic fluent in inquiry, but incapable of delivery.

And that, more than any cartoon, is the sharpest satire of all.