State of the Union

Last Friday, South African President Thabo Mbeki gave his State of the Union Address from Cape Town. Unlike at home in the U.S., Mbeki's address was held at 11:00 AM. What was interesting to us was how at 11:00, basically everyone in the Municipality stopped working and proceeded to the Mayor's Boardroom to watch the address. Now, granted, I'm working in the Municipal government, so everyone here takes a bit more interest and holds Mbeki in such high regard. But I wondered if everyone working at that time - government or non-government - stopped their work to watch the President's speech. I started talking to some of the my teammates and the other Americans about it - and we all agreed we wondered that if the U.S. President's State of the Union address were during the day rather than at night, would the viewership increase? I feel like sometimes at home, people are more upset that their prime-time TV shows are delayed or cancelled.

Mbeki spoke a lot about the development in South Africa, gave statistics about health and wellness, economic advancement and improvements, his visions for ongoing growth. He also happened to mention UNDP a few times - not specifically about our Municipal Capacity Development Support Initiative project - but about UNDP's greater work in South Africa or UNDP derived statistics. One interesting one that provoked applause in the President's audience was SA's status in spending more money on water and sanitation development than on military.

Another topic he mentioned which struck on a personal level - that each District Municipality would be holding a Growth and Development Summit this month. I'll be attending OR Tambo D.M.'s Summit starting this week with the Development and Planning Manager and a few of the councilors. I look forward to it and hope to learn a great deal about how the growth of the local and district municipalities matches the growth and vision of South Africa overall.