Ramaphosa announced tax breaks for households and businesses using solar energy, and a new ministry of electricity to tackle the energy crisis facing the nation.
In his Thursday "State of the Nation" address, he termed the nation's crumbling electrical infrastructure as a "State of Disaster" and said he would create a "Minister of Electricity."
Governance expert Alex van den Heever, however, described the move to implement a new ministry as "inexplicable."
"The onus is really on government at this point to actually explain what these measures are meant to achieve, that couldn’t be achieved by more efficient alternatives," van den Heever told VOA.
Van den Heever said the president should’ve appointed an independent panel of experts to solve the energy crisis, not give that task to the same government that created the "catastrophe."
Electricity has been going on and off in South Africa for the past 15 years. But the crisis reached new heights last July, with outages lasting up to 12 hours a day.
Thursday for the fourth year in a row, Ramaphosa promised to end the blackouts.
Ramaphosa also promised to fix 151 bankrupt or near-bankrupt African Nation Congress-run municipalities with infrastructure projects and tighter financial controls.
He promised 2-million new jobs, and to cut violent crime by half.
But former ANC activist Zackie Achmat said he does not trust the Ramaphosa administration.
"We don’t have a state of the nation! We have a state of destruction! The state is destroyed; it isn’t capable of providing solutions to the struggles of working people and poor people," Achmat said.
At a civil society rally coinciding with Ramaphosa’s speech, speakers condemned the ANC for its "ineptitude" and alleged corruption.
Former ANC stalwart, Reverend Frank Chikane, asked South Africans to "rise up forcefully, but non-violently," against the party he almost died for when he was fighting against apartheid.
"We need to reach a stage where the system can’t exist outside us. And these parliamentarians will not continue doing what they’re doing if we’re there on the ground with a crisis," said Chikane.
Chikane’s Democracy Now movement wants citizens to vote the ANC out in elections scheduled for early next year.
Van den Heever said criticism of Ramaphosa for continuing to keep officials implicated in corruption in his cabinet – and expecting citizens to trust them – is valid.
"What he’s doing here is leaving people in place that he can’t work with and trying to compensate for that by adding people into the presidency," van den Heever said.
If this persists, van den Heever said, Ramaphosa can make all the speeches and promises he wants, but citizens won’t have any faith in him to deliver.
