When the President stands before Parliament to deliver the State of the Nation Address (SONA), the commitments made from the podium become more than political declarations. They become promises to the people of South Africa – promises that must eventually find expression in policies, budgets, projects and, ultimately, changes in people’s lives. But what happens after the applause?
That question was at the centre of the Committee on the Presidency’s engagement with the Presidency and the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), as committee members interrogated how government coordinates, monitors and responds to the implementation of SONA commitments.
The Presidency’s presentation was led by Minister in the Presidency, Ms Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, supported by Director-General and Secretary of Cabinet Ms Phindile Baleni and Chief Operations Officer Mr Rory Gallocher.
The DPME presentation was led by Minister in the Presidency responsible for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Ms Maropene Ramokgopa, supported by Acting Director-General Adv Melanchton Makobe and Acting DDG Mr Lindsay Martin.
The engagement provided a window into the machinery behind SONA – the systems through which political commitments are translated into departmental plans and budgets, monitored through government structures and escalated when implementation encounters obstacles. The scale of that task is substantial.
The Presidency indicated that the February 2025 SONA contained 133 commitments, with the largest share – 63 – falling under the first strategic priority of achieving inclusive growth, growing the economy and creating jobs. The 2026 SONA subsequently added a further set of commitments. Taken together, the two SONA cycles contain 253 commitments, according to information provided to the committee. The larger figure reflects the combined commitment portfolio from the 2025 and 2026 addresses. The Presidency undertook to provide the committee with detailed matrices setting out progress and implementation information on these commitments.
This distinction is important because SONA commitments do not necessarily operate within a single financial or annual cycle. Some commitments are long-term interventions – including major infrastructure projects – whose implementation extends over several years.
The commitments themselves span some of South Africa’s most pressing challenges: accelerating infrastructure investment, supporting entrepreneurship and productive livelihoods, expanding public employment, advancing industrial policy, implementing reforms in energy, logistics and water, improving education and skills development, tackling gender-based violence and femicide, strengthening local government, harnessing digital transformation and contributing to a better Africa and world.
But making a commitment is only the beginning.
The Presidency explained that once SONA commitments are announced, they are translated into funded departmental plans, annual performance plans and budgets. Departments and entities remain responsible for implementation and providing evidence of delivery, while Cabinet clusters coordinate cross-government dependencies. The Presidency’s role is to convene, unblock and escalate strategic delivery challenges, with DPME providing the monitoring architecture. It was precisely this chain of accountability that committee members wanted to interrogate.
For the committee, accountability cannot end with a department reporting that an intervention is “in progress”. Parliament needs to know who is responsible, what has been achieved, what remains outstanding, what is causing delays and what action is being taken to get implementation back on track.
The Presidency identified several areas for heightened coordination because of their cross-cutting nature and potential impact on economic performance. These include energy, visa reform, logistics and water, alongside local government and the National Illicit Economy Disruption Programme. Each area has its own action plan intended to coordinate and catalyse work across departments. Yet even the best coordination framework depends on reliable information. This is where DPME’s work assumes increasing significance.
Minister Ramokgopa’s department briefed the committee on its geospatial information management strategy, developed to strengthen the use of integrated geospatial information in government planning, monitoring, reporting and decision-making. The strategy recognises that development is inherently spatial. It matters not only whether government is building infrastructure, but where that infrastructure is being built, which communities it serves, where gaps remain and whether investment is reaching areas where it is most needed.
DPME has also been developing systems capable of bringing together planning, performance, infrastructure, financial and spatial information. The intention is to provide government with a clearer picture of performance and emerging delivery risks.
For Parliament, however, technology alone is not the answer. Committee members questioned what happens when monitoring systems identify delayed projects, cost overruns or persistent underperformance. They also sought clarity on how information generated through these systems would support parliamentary oversight and how corrective action would be triggered when implementation falls behind.
The discussion around the proposed digital dashboard for major infrastructure projects brought this issue into sharper focus. Committee members wanted to understand how the system would identify projects at risk, who would be responsible for intervention and whether Parliament would eventually be able to use the information to strengthen its oversight.
The Presidency explained that dashboards are intended to provide a high-level strategic picture, while more detailed performance information remains available through departmental reporting and other government monitoring mechanisms.
Committee members also raised concerns about the verification of reported performance information. The reliability of data is critical to parliamentary oversight: Parliament cannot effectively assess implementation if information about progress, delays and outcomes cannot be confidently verified. This concern was reflected in the committee’s request for more detailed information on the commitments, including where they are being implemented, the constraints affecting delivery and the responsible departments.
The Presidency acknowledged that SONA commitments frequently involve more than one department or sphere of government and that some are affected by policy, institutional, financial or intergovernmental constraints.
The committee therefore sees value in understanding not only whether a commitment is on track, but where the bottleneck lies. This is ultimately about more than dashboards, matrices and databases. It is about closing the distance between a commitment announced in Parliament and the experience of a citizen waiting for a job, a household waiting for water, a community waiting for infrastructure or a business waiting for an economic reform to unlock opportunities.
The Presidency’s presentation demonstrated that a substantial architecture already exists to translate SONA commitments into plans, budgets, monitoring reports and interventions. The committee’s challenge is to ensure that this architecture produces information sufficiently clear, credible and measurable to support Parliament’s constitutional oversight role.
Some commitments will take years to complete. Others require multiple institutions to work together. Some will inevitably encounter obstacles. But that does not make them less accountable. If anything, the more complex the commitment, the greater the need for Parliament to be able to follow its journey.
From the promise made at the SONA podium, to the departmental plan, from the plan to implementation, from implementation to measurable outcomes – the Committee on the Presidency is seeking to make that journey visible. Because ultimately, the test of a SONA commitment is not whether it was announced; it is whether South Africans can see the difference it makes.
Temba Gubula
17 August 2026
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