While Rise Mzansi leader Songezo Zibi,said that overall he thought the State of the Nation Address (SONA) speech delivered by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday was a good one, the National Coloured Congress was not as impressed.

After SONA, Zibi said that what he thought it was important that the president mentioning each of the fallen soldiers, killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, by name.

“I think it was really important because for decades South Africans, since the arms deal, have not really cared much about the military. It's under resourced there are leadership problems, governance problems and it's an enormous sacrifice that the soldiers make when they go on these missions, so i thought it was really good,” Zibi said.

“Overall I thought it was a really good speech it touched on domestic and international issues, to the right level of proportion. Unlike before we only get high level mention of some of the strategic priorities, the president dug into some of the detail mentioned infrastructure but became very specific - water infrastructure, passenger rail, freight rail and mentioned very specific plans...

“It was a different SONA. What you have to see is whether the budget, and what the finance minister tables is going to provide viable funding plans for all of these priorities,” Zibi said.

Fadiel Adams of the National Coloured Congress was less impressed by the speech.

“We are very disappointed and we've got a feeling it's only going to be worse,” Adams said.

“Certain municipalities want the devolution of police powers. They want investigating powers until their Mayco's offices get raided. So it makes you think? But then on that note, you can throw 100,000 policemen at the Cape Flats today, nothing will change while crime intelligence is rotten.“

theolin.tembo@inl.co.za