Opinion piece by Errol Naidoo
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 2026 State of the Nation Address on 12 February was predictably underwhelming. Ramaphosa appears increasingly detached from reality making grandiose bullet train promises while his government fails to deliver basic services.
Incredibly, the ANC deploys corrupt and incompetent cadres to serve as councillors in various municipalities. But when they bankrupt and run the municipalities into the ground, the ANC led government lays criminal charges against them for failing to deliver services.
Instead of fixing the cadre deployment disaster that has destroyed SA’s infrastructure, Ramaphosa throws more taxpayer money at the problem. He committed R156 billion to fix the water and sanitation crisis without addressing the corruption and gross mismanagement that caused it in the first place. The taxpayer is forced to foot the bill.
Ramaphosa also deployed the ill-trained and under-resourced SA National Defence Force (SANDF) to combat gang violence and illegal mining. This dramatic intervention is made necessary because the SA Police Service (SAPS) is controlled by organised crime.
The ANC led government failed its constitutional obligations to protect law abiding citizens from crime and violence. SAPS is captured by organised crime and the criminal justice system is riddled with corruption and incompetence leaving citizens to fend for themselves.
Ramaphosa commended the education sector for pass rates. However, “Equal Education Law Centre” cautioned against equating high pass rates with a healthy system. They said, “While we join the president in congratulating the matric Class of 2025, we know their achievements are in spite of a deeply unequal education system, not because of it.”
“We must not romanticise hardship. There was no mention of solving the massive infrastructural backlog that puts learners’ lives at risk daily, or the 15,371 unfilled educator posts pushing learner-teacher ratios to unsustainable levels.”
The president made several promises he claimed would fix the unemployment crisis. However, he failed to mention the ANC policies that are the primary causes of economic decline. In fact, Ramaphosa assured ANC cadres of further BEE enrichment opportunities.
Ramaphosa also announced a substantial investment in health infrastructure and prioritised the construction and revitalising of academic hospitals. He did not mention the looting of billions from hospitals/health sector by ANC cadres, which includes his nephew.
The ANC led government has increased race-based laws to favour certain racial groups. The R100 billion Transformation Fund to assist black businessmen is one such discriminatory policy. This fund offers the taxpayer no guarantee of business success.
The South African Constitution – our supreme law – was founded on the ashes of apartheid and expressly rejects racial classification as a basis for law or policy. Section 1 of the Constitution establishes South Africa as a democratic state founded on human dignity.
Also equality, and non-racialism. While the ‘Equality Clause’ guarantees no person may be unfairly discriminated against on the grounds of race, gender, colour, or ethnicity. These provisions are not symbolic but designed to ensure that no government – past or future – may again classify, privilege, or disadvantage citizens based on skin colour or ancestry.
Under apartheid, the Population Registration Act of 1950 required every South African to be classified by race – as ‘White,’ ‘Native,’ ‘Coloured,’ or later, ‘Indian.’ This Act was the cornerstone of apartheid. It divided the nation into artificial racial groups and used these classifications to determine who could vote and where people could live and work.
The entire edifice of apartheid, from the Group Areas Act to the Bantu Education Act, rested on this system of legally enforced racial identity. The repeal of the Population Registration Act was a historic turning point. It symbolised SA’s rejection of race as a legal concept. The Constitution enshrined this principle by establishing a non-racial democracy.
Despite this, many of today’s laws and government policies framed as ‘transformation’, ‘redress’, or ‘affirmative action’ continue to allocate rights, benefits, and opportunities on the basis of race. These include employment equity targets, procurement preferences, and BBBEE scorecards that explicitly differentiate between ‘Black’, ‘White’, ‘Coloured,’ ‘Indian.’
Yet there is a fatal legal problem: There is no law in South Africa today that defines what a ‘Black’, ‘White’, ‘Indian’ or ‘Coloured’ person is. The apartheid-era definitions died with the Population Registration Act. No statute since 1991 has replaced it.
The Constitution & Equality Act prohibit unfair discrimination based on race, but they do not legally define ‘race.’ This means all race-based legislation operate on assumed, socially constructed – self-reported racial identities, without objective legal basis. In effect, the state enforces racial preference without lawful racial definition – a constitutional impossibility.
As a consequence, and in the interest of justice, “Rescue SA Civil Rights Alliance” first High Court application will challenge the blatant discrimination and injustice inherent in the ANC’s race-based laws. The Alliance is working on cases that challenge the state’s failure to provide clean water, safety and security, deny children’s rights and many others.
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Date published: 17/02/2026
Feature images sourced from FreePik
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