By 
During his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Thursday evening, 6 February 2025, President Cyril Ramaphosa said state entities are vital to the country’s economy and it is therefore essential for them to function optimally.
Ramaphosa kicked off his address by paying tribute to the fallen soldiers of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during a peacekeeping mission; he also took a moment to refute allegations that the troops were in the DRC to protect his mining interests.
“They lost their lives not in the pursuit of resources or territory or power. They lost their lives so that the guns on our continent may be forever silenced. We salute our gallant soldiers,” said President Ramaphosa.
The President told the nation that government has ambitions to grow the economy to above three percent, by attracting more investment and create jobs, as such, government will undertake a massive investment drive on infrastructure while upgrading and maintaining the infrastructure the country has.
He said government will partner with the private sector in order to achieve this ambitious infrastructure investment drive.
“Government will spend more than R940 billion on infrastructure over the next three years. This includes R375 billion in spending by state owned companies. This funding will revitalise our roads and bridges, build dams and waterways, modernise our ports and airports and power our economy.
Through the Infrastructure Fund, twelve blended finance projects worth nearly R38 billion have been approved in the last year. These are projects in water and sanitation, student accommodation, transport, health and energy,” he said.
Ramaphosa said over the coming years, the country will witness a more aggressive approach towards infrastructure investment, whereby state owned entities will be repositioned as they are vital for the economy to function optimally.
He said entities like Eskom, Transnet and other state owned enterprises will be repositioned.
“We are repositioning these entities to provide world-class infrastructure while enabling competition in operations, whether in electricity generation, freight rail or port terminals. We continue with the fundamental reform of our state owned enterprises to ensure that they can effectively fulfil their social and economic mandates.
This includes the work underway to put in place a new model to strengthen governance and oversight of public entities. We will ensure public ownership of strategic infrastructure for public benefit while finding innovative ways to attract private investment to improve services and ensure public revenue can be focused on the provision of public services,” said Cyril Ramaphosa.
“We are in the process of establishing a dedicated SOE Reform Unit to coordinate this work. The measures we have implemented through the Energy Action Plan have reduced the severity and frequency of load shedding, with more than 300 days without load shedding since March 2024,” he continued.
Though the country experienced load-shedding for two days over the weekend last week, the President remains optimistic and said the state is still on a positive trajectory even though energy supply is still constrained.
He said the country now needs to put the risk of load-shedding behind it once and for all by completing the reform of energy system to ensure long-term energy security.
“The Electricity Regulation Amendment Act, which came into effect on the 1st of January, marks the beginning of a new era. This year, we will put in place the building blocks of a competitive electricity market. Over time, this will allow multiple electricity generation entities to emerge and compete.
We will mobilise private sector investment in our transmission network to connect more renewable energy to the grid. As we reform our energy system, we are continuing to build successful multilateral partnerships in the global effort to halt the devastating impact of climate change,” said the President.
