The tumultuous events of the past few months, lent an additional degree of importance to this year’s State of the Nation (SONA) address. Amongst those who will have been listening especially carefully were the business and investment community. Here, a definite positive was the President's recognition that business and the free market are essential in achieving growth.
Clearly, the business community’s warnings and suggestions as to how to create the correct investment support infrastructure have been taken on board. In general, the problems facing the country were acknowledged and not played down. One felt that Government have heard the concerns of various constituencies and are serious about taking action to address them.
SONA took place in the very week in which the President was obliged to appear before the Constitutional Court over Nkandla and, before the eyes of the nation, make a string of significant concessions. It was a dramatic climb-down after many months of evasion and denial. Far more important than the amount that will ultimately be paid back the public demonstration that no-one in South Africa is above the law, and that our democratic institutions, from a vigorous political Opposition through to a free press, robust civil society and independent judiciary, are able when necessary to call to account government at the highest level.
Coincidentally, even as these events were unfolding on the local front, a former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, was beginning his gaol sentence for corruption. Superficially, this might be indicative of something being profoundly wrong with both countries, but in fact, the opposite is true. The measure of a country’s political health is not the complete absence of high level corruption which is a completely unrealistic expectation impossible, but that there exist the legal means as well as the political will to deal effectively with corruption when it does surface. Last week, both South Africa and Israel passed this important test.