January is a great month for promises and plans in our politics. This week we will have a deluge of assurances unleashed as part of the ANC’s January 8 birthday celebrations. Straight after that we will have the party’s usual lekgotla resolutions. Then it will be the cabinet lekgotla’s deliberations and resolutions.

That’s a lot of hot air for just the first few weeks of 2021 by people who have been in power for 26 years, but that’s just the beginning. All that hot air will be part of the lead-up to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation speech (Sona), in which he will make more promises and then tell us to wait to see the meat on his plans in the finance minister’s budget in late February. The minister will tweet that he is tired of bailing out SAA, then bail out all the cash-guzzling state-owned enterprises (SOEs) anyway...