President Cyril Ramaphosa Cancels Tonight’s State of the Nation Address and Here Is Why

President Cyril Ramaphosa Cancels Tonight’s State of the Nation Address and Here Is Why. Earlier today, it was announced that the country was going to have a family meeting today. President Cyril Ramaphosa was this evening was going to address the nation on two main issues.

The president was going to update on the outcomes of the 15th BRICS Summit. The summit was hosted by South Africa a week ago. BRICS is a group of leading emerging markets and developing countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The summit took place from Aug. 22-24 at the city’s Sandton Convention Centre. It was the first in-person BRICS summit since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another pressing matter that the president was going to touch on is the outcome of the panel investigation into the docking of the Lady R vessel in South Africa. The State of the Nation Address has been put on hold now, because there are more pressing matters, that Ramaphosa has to attend to.

“The President will, this afternoon, conduct a site visit to Marshalltown to receive a briefing on the emergency and recovery operations and on the support the government is providing to the affected families,” the Presidency announced.

This morning at least 73 people lost their lives from a fire at the 5-storey Marshalltown building in Johannesburg CBD. It has been reported that the building that caught fire this is a hijacked building full of illegal immigrants.

It is not yet clear what could have caused the fire. It’s reported that people had build shacks inside the building, and there were some illegal electricity connections. International media outlets such as BBC News, New York Times, CNN and Al Jazeera are also reporting on the issue