Ann Bernstein argues that government is treating systemic state failure with band-aid solutions – proliferating task teams and crisis committees – rather than confronting the root causes of institutional collapse and implementing the fundamental reforms needed to rebuild a capable state.

President Cyril Ramaphosa recently delivered his 10th State of the Nation Address. Some praised it as decisive and frank. I heard something else.

I saw a leader in an election year, juggling one emergency after another. I saw a man mistaking movement for momentum. I saw a government that has not confronted why we are in such deep trouble, that has postponed hard decisions for years, and that scrambles for quick fixes to crises long in the making

Yes, the fiscal picture is better than it was in 2019. Growth has ticked up. But this is not a country that has absorbed the lessons of its decline and chosen a convincingly new path. We are drifting, not reforming.

Why do we lurch from crisis to crisis?

The president often invokes the Zuma years and state capture. That history matters. But is it totally insufficient? Ramaphosa has been in office since 2018. If everything is still legacy, then what is the point of his leadership?

Weak and compromised

South Africa is in crisis, governed by a state that is weak and compromised. This is the lived experience of households, businesses and communities. Unemployment is stratospheric. The tax base narrows while welfare needs expanding. Infrastructure declines visibly as costs rise for declining services. All of us are forced to adapt to state failure as if it were weather.

Against this backdrop, the SONA offered familiar reassurances: government recognises the problems; action will follow; new interventions will deliver.

But beneath the rhetoric lies a pattern of proliferating task teams, war rooms and crisis committees, many reporting to an ever-expanding Presidency. These are ad hoc scaffolds erected around failing institutions, temporary structures designed to compensate for festering permanent weaknesses. This is not decisive reform, leadership or governance.

It is true that some of these interventions have delivered pockets of progress. Energy reform has benefited from greater policy coherence and private-sector expertise mobilised through the energy crisis committee. The same is true of logistics. But we must be clear about scale and pace.

We are only at the beginning of an energy transition toward a competitive market that brings down prices. The hardest battles, against the most deeply entrenched interests lie ahead. Glaciers move more swiftly.

Remember that when listening to boosterism.

When the president announces action on water failures, the crisis in policing breakdowns or municipal collapse, he is typically not rebuilding institutions or addressing root causes. He is reacting to the embarrassment of crises only after they become too visible to ignore.

Each initiative reflects a deeper reality: the head of state does not fully trust the institutions he leads to perform their mandates. Rather than reorganise the executive, appoint the best possible people to key jobs, and enforce accountability, his default response is to erect a temporary structure, while the underlying machinery grinds on unrepaired. We now have a task team within the energy crisis committee that has three months to report to the president with an energy restructuring plan.

Held together with duct tape

In the process, the state is being hollowed out while being held together by institutional duct tape – Band-Aids.

In the SONA, the president framed electricity, freight logistics, policing, water and local government as crises requiring targeted interventions. This is the wrong approach – the problems are systemic. Capability has eroded across multiple domains simultaneously: policy design, procurement, project management, financial control, regulatory oversight. Leadership and implementation have weakened together.

Corruption and incompetence mean we spend vast sums for depressingly meagre returns.

A striking feature of the address was the tough tone on local government. With numerous municipalities characterised by crumbling infrastructure, failing services and financial disarray, the president warned that non-performance would carry serious consequences.

This belated candour is welcome. But hard questions are warranted. Much of municipal dysfunction stems from political leadership, often from within his own party, that treats public office as a source of patronage and personal enrichment rather than a responsibility to build even basic competence.

There is also a glaring asymmetry. The president speaks sternly to local officials, yet ignores underperformance at national level. Far too many national departments and state-owned enterprises underperform, often with budgets and responsibilities larger than those of most municipalities. Where is the equivalent resolve? Where are the consequences for failing ministers and directors-general?

In the president’s own Cabinet, accountability is extraordinarily weak. Consequences for incompetence, intransigence, or worse are rare. Why the difference? Perhaps municipal collapse is more visible and electorally costly, while national dysfunction can be framed as complexity, legacy or reform in progress. But if poor performance justifies intervention and sanction in municipalities, why not at national level?

Public Services Amendment Bill

The Public Service Amendment Bill, awaiting the president’s signature, points in the right direction. It aims to professionalise the public service, clarify the relationship between political leaders and administrative heads, and strengthen accountability. Over time, this could matter.

What happens in the meantime? The country’s crisis is immediate. The bill will not remove ministers accused of corruption. It will not dislodge officials who cannot do their jobs.

The president is correct that we face urgent challenges. But urgency cannot become an alibi for permanent improvisation. No country can be governed indefinitely through crisis committees. You cannot run a modern state like a hospital emergency room, stabilising one patient while others queue in worsening condition.

Why are crises allowed to deepen until embarrassment forces action? Why does government respond only after Johannesburg suburbs go without water for weeks, even as other communities have endured empty pipes for years?

SONA presented the image of a president plugging leaks as they appear. South Africa’s challenge is not isolated cracks. It is structural fatigue. The president doesn’t have enough fingers to plug every gap, and no system can survive indefinitely on this path.

If reform is to succeed and South Africa is to avoid permanent institutional failure, we need more than reactive coordination. We need urgent reconstruction. That means confronting why the state has lost capability. It means ending cadre deployment. It means removing incompetent and corrupt officials. It means appointing leaders with the expertise, authority and integrity to deliver results.

A state cannot be rebuilt through ad hocism. You cannot restore credibility with speeches, commissions and committees alone. Investors, citizens and public servants themselves watch what happens to those who fail, and they learn the appropriate lessons when failure is rewarded.

The president’s words recognised the scale of the crisis. The test is whether he is prepared to act at the national level with the same firmness he promises for municipalities. Leadership is not measured by the number of task teams created, but by the willingness to make hard decisions about people and power.

We do not need a more elaborate system of temporary supports. We need to rebuild the structure. And that begins by being honest about why it is falling and who is responsible.

Until then, we will continue mistaking activity for reform, and emergency measures for renewal.

– Ann Bernstein is head of the Centre for Development and Enterprise

This article was published on News24