MKP Dismisses Ramaphosa’s SONA: 'Empty Words, No Real Change'
The State of the Nation Address (SONA) 2025 was supposed to be a moment for President Cyril Ramaphosa to reassure South Africans. Instead, his words have sparked furious backlash from the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), with leaders calling it a ‘fake address’ and a ‘waste of time.’ The message from the MKP is direct: the problems facing ordinary South Africans aren’t being solved by political speeches.
At the heart of the criticism is the reality on the streets. MKP party leader Dr. John Hlophe pulled no punches, saying the president’s speech failed to touch the issues that keep families up at night—poverty, unemployment, and rampant racism. The 42% extended unemployment rate is more than just a number for the MKP; it’s a symbol of a broken system. Hlophe says the claims about job creation ring hollow, brushing them off as election tricks rather than meaningful, long-term solutions. According to him, government programs are just short-term contracts that disappear after polling season.
The MKP also threw cold water on Ramaphosa’s celebration of the country’s supposed success in ending power cuts. Ramaphosa boasted about '300 days without load shedding,' but MKP’s message was blunt: the experience on the ground tells a different story. Power outages still hit communities, just now packaged as ‘load reduction’ instead of load shedding. For families dealing with sudden blackouts, the name change means little.
Food on the table and a roof overhead are basic expectations, but MKP says the president offered no realistic hope for people hungry or homeless. Everyday South Africans can still see lines at soup kitchens and families sleeping out in the open, proof, they argue, that there’s a huge gap between the government’s story and actual results. The speech did little, MKP insists, to bridge that gap.
Privatization Accusations and Frustration With the GNU
The MKP’s frustration didn’t stop at power outages and jobs. A big concern raised by the party spokesperson, Nhlamulo Ndhlela, is what they see as creeping privatization of utilities—like water and electricity—through government partnerships funded by international entities like the IMF and World Bank. MKP frames this as a threat to public control of essential services and argues it risks making daily life even harder for those already struggling.
The current political arrangement, known as the Government of National Unity (GNU), was also in MKP’s firing line. Rather than uniting the country, they say institutions like GNU are ignoring the country’s structural crises and choosing to focus on austerity, cutting funding for services instead of tackling issues head-on. According to the MKP, that leaves South Africa drifting further away from real solutions and deeper into daily hardships.
At the end of the day, the message MKP wants to drive home is that SONA was disconnected from the lived experiences of most South Africans. Homelessness, joblessness, hunger, and power cuts aren’t abstract policy discussions—they’re reality. MKP is signaling they’ll keep calling out what they believe are just empty promises, hoping to force a political reckoning and bring the focus back to people in need.
