The recent State of the Nation Address (Sona) debate exposed a profound level of political degeneracy and ideational bankruptcy within South Africa’s Parliament. It offered a revealing window into the disposition, priorities and intellectual outlook of the country’s three principal political formations: the African National Congress (ANC), the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP). The majority of black South Africans have invested considerable political hope and expectation in these parties. Yet the Sona debate demonstrated that such expectations are largely misplaced. These formations appear overwhelmingly preoccupied with the preservation of their middle-class lifestyles and material comfort, while displaying little genuine concern for the broader sociopolitical obligations they claim to champion. Despite presenting themselves as agents of liberation and transformation, their parliamentary conduct reveals a striking indifference to the lived realities of the majority.
The debate underscored a worrying lack of capacity, readiness and seriousness to govern. Collectively, these parties appear ill-equipped to occupy the highest levels of state power, leaving the country exposed and vulnerable. What emerged was a profound leadership deficit at the national level, accompanied by the erosion of governance capability. Ordinary citizens are effectively left out in the cold, with no credible political alternative to turn to. The dominant political actors appear unable—or unwilling—to read the political environment accurately or to grasp prevailing public sentiment and shifting sociopolitical dynamics. The era of political symbolism devoid of substance has clearly reached its limits. Military fatigues, red overalls and three-piece suits draped with national-flag scarves no longer inspire confidence or convey revolutionary seriousness.
These performative symbols, combined with a confrontational and militarised parliamentary culture, have failed to produce constructive or meaningful outcomes. Instead, they have become hollow rituals masking intellectual emptiness. During the Sona debate, the three parties largely engaged in adversarial posturing and derisive rhetoric, prioritising spectacle and partisan theatrics over substantive engagement. This occurred against the backdrop of a nation confronting multiple, overlapping crises.
Communities remain terrorised by illegal mining syndicates; farmers are suffering severe losses due to foot-and-mouth disease; many households continue to endure inadequate access to water and sanitation; neighbourhoods are ravaged by persistent gang violence; and schoolchildren are dying in preventable scholar transport incidents.
At the same time, university students protested outside Parliament over the chronic shortage of student accommodation. Equally disturbing is the plight of South African youth trapped in the Donbas region amid the Russia–Ukraine conflict—an illustration of enduring economic marginalisation and vulnerability to exploitation. Yet for many parliamentary representatives, the impoverished communities from which these young people originate appear to be little more than abstract statistics rather than human lives demanding urgent intervention.
Earlier the President announced that the Ministers responsible for Water and Sanitation, as well as Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, had been excused from attending the actual Sona sitting to attend to the Gauteng water crisis. However, information that emerged the following day revealed that the Minister of Water and Sanitation had travelled to Addis Ababa to attend an African Union summit.
Since the authority to approve international travel by Cabinet members rests with the President, this sequence of events suggests a deliberate political judgement regarding the relative importance of a domestic water emergency versus participation in continental diplomacy.
As long as the middle-class status of political elites remains secure, meaningful sociopolitical change is unlikely. Existing patterns of governance failure will persist. This reality was on full display during the debate, as some parliamentarians actively instigated taunts and disruptions while others remained passive, allowing parliamentary decorum and established procedural norms to collapse.
The EFF advanced sensational and unsubstantiated allegations, claiming that certain politicians engage in occult practices involving the killing of foreign nationals to secure electoral success. The ANC, in turn, accused former President Jacob Zuma of facilitating the metaphorical “sale” of young South Africans into the Russia–Ukraine war. Across the chamber, members exchanged personalised insults—“Rupert’s ice boy,” “Tiger,” “Weekend Special,” and “Stellenbosch ice boy”—reducing parliamentary discourse to a spectacle of ridicule and insult. Frivolous points of order proliferated as members indulged in what amounted to an orgy of political frivolity.
While black political leaders immerse themselves in internal rivalries and theatrical banter, they consistently overlook a fundamental truth: it is their own constituencies that bear the cost of this failure. Since 1994, the lack of meaningful socioeconomic transformation has disproportionately harmed black communities, condemning many to decaying infrastructure, high crime, persistent poverty and mass unemployment. Yet upon achieving a degree of middle-class security, many leaders abandon the very communities that propelled them into power. This public spectacle undermines the credibility of black political leadership both domestically and internationally. It tacitly permits other racial groups to dismiss black communities as unserious and undeserving of sustained engagement.
Ultimately, if leaders who emerge from marginalised communities fail to prioritise the most vulnerable, there is little reason to expect external actors to do so on their behalf. Political parties that claim to represent black people continue to elevate the least capable and most disconnected individuals into positions of power. Their parliamentary performance reflects a profound detachment from social realities and confirms an inability to manage a complex modern economy or address the entrenched marginalisation of an indigenous majority historically excluded from power.
The middle-class cohort dominating Parliament consistently underutilises its access to state power and governance authority. In doing so, it squanders critical opportunities to implement policies that could materially transform the lives of their constituents. As marginalised communities continue to invest electoral trust in these representatives, they often remain unaware of how precarious their own structural position remains. This crisis is likely to deepen.
Political actors appear primarily concerned with preserving their middle-class lifestyles, rather than constructing a coherent political project aimed at collective advancement. There remains no consolidated black hegemonic elite capable of articulating and advancing a compelling ideological vision for socioeconomic transformation. Until such leadership emerges, Parliament will remain a theatre of degeneration rather than an instrument of liberation.
Dr Mabutho Shangase, Senior Lecturer, Political Studies and International Relations, North-West University, @ nativconscience
While black political leaders immerse themselves in internal rivalries and theatrical banter, they consistently overlook a fundamental truth: it is their own constituencies that bear the cost of this failure
