President Cyril Ramaphosa has boldly asserted South Africa’s independence vowing not to be bullied.
Ramaphosa’s assertion comes amid a litany of threats and unprecedented decisions by newly installed US President Donald Trump who has been made to believe that South Africa’s white population was being killed enmasse and forced off their land, claims that have been proven to be false.
While he maintained diplomatic decorum in his State of the Nation address delivered on Thursday in Cape Town ( South Africa’s legislative capital) Ramaphosa made it clear that while the government was prepared to listen to criticism, it will not be forced to abondon its transformation agenda.
“We will not be bullied, we will stand together as a united nation and speak in one voice to defend our national interest. We stand for peace and justice. We stand for equal rights for women, we stand for members of LGBTQ community,” said Ramaphosa to loud applause.
The president said the government will forge ahead with its transformation agenda ( opposed even from within the Government of National Unity).
Amongst the pieces of legislation that the right, led by the Democratic Alliance which is a leading player in the GNU is the National Health Insurance, Bela Bill ( meant to bring equality in the basic education sector ) and the Expropriation Act which was put in place to facilitate land reform in a country where close to 80 percent of land is owned by minorities who make up a tiny percentage of the population.
Ramaphosa dismissed claims by right-wing groupings and medical aid schemes that the NHI will collapse private health care insisting that too many people currently don’t have access to primary healthcare and that the NHI is the intervention required to fix this.
He said was already underway to improve existing infrastructure.
“This includes developing the first phase of a single electronic health record, preparatory work to establishMinisterial Advisory Committees on health technologies and health care benefits, and an accreditation framework for health service providers.
The NHI will reduce inequalities in healthcare by ensuring everyone gets fair treatment,” he said.
Ramaphosa reiterated the commitment, made in previous speeches over the years, to create much needed jobs as unemployment particularly among the youth continue to rise.
On the international front he reaffirmed South Africa’s support for Palestine which faces threat of extinction as a result of persistent bombardment by Western backed Israel.
He also used the speech to denounce claims that the peacekeeping mission in the DRC was a guise for protection of his own commercial interests.
“Most recently, we have been part of the SADC peacekeeping mission in Mozambique that has brought relative calm and stability to the Cabo Delgado province. The presence of South African peacekeepers in the eastern DRC is testament to our continued commitment to the peaceful resolution of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts, which has cost millions of lives and displaced millions of people,” he said.