Cape Town - President Jacob Zuma is expected to outline the work that needs to be done to improve service delivery and create more jobs in the country when he presents his second State of the Nation Address (SONA) this evening.
Zuma will deliver his address to a joint sitting of Parliament in the National Assembly at 7pm.
Briefing the media ahead of the event, Minister in the Presidency responsible for Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Collins Chabane said Zuma would focus on what steps had been taken around job creation since government announced its response to the economic downturn last February.
Chabane said the President would likely concentrate on what the critical things are that South Africa needs to do to "achieve the transformation we need" while looking at what was needed to drive the economy and to create more jobs.
However, he said the government was confident that the economy was likely to improve.
During his speech Zuma will hone in on government's five priority areas, namely jobs, crime, rural development, health and education.
He said the government will be developing outcomes and measurable targets for all its five priority areas as indicated in its position paper published last year "improving government performance".
"We are trying to pull every effort; everything we have as a society together to make sure that we are able to move forward, all of us," he said.
The government will provide more details on what targets and timelines would be set for various departments, in a media briefing at Parliament on Friday, said Chabane.
"Because if we don't monitor it, people won't know if we are making it or not," said Chabane, who also revealed that government would indicate soon whether there would be a need to adjust its targets on job creation.
He also pointed out that nationalisation was not an issue that government was considering at the moment.
"The issue of nationalisation is not a debate that is in government, so I don't think the President would like to stop discussing whatever they are discussing," he said.
He could not say whether Zuma would address the debate around the Reserve Bank, but emphasised that this was likely to be clarified in Wednesday's Budget Speech.
