Not surprisingly, given the recent credit rating downgrades, and years of slow growth, the economy features strongly, along with jobs and unemployment, particularly youth unemployment. Social cohesion/nation building was right up there too because the new president has to win back the trust of a disillusioned electorate bruised by a constant barrage of “state capture” headlines, which also explains why corruption was one of the top-five topics. We ranked education at number five, with the free higher education and training for the poor and working class policy, which comes into effect this year, dominating the topic. The president also said the ASIDI initiative to build modern facilities at rural and underprivileged schools will be completed by the end of the next financial year.

Education featured strongly in President Zuma’s last SONA, dominated by his response to the #FeesMustFall protests at tertiary education institutions. But the topic that got most of the president’s attention was radical economic transformation/black economic empowerment.

The economy, once again was centre stage, followed by an acknowledgement of growing concerns over the performance of state-owned enterprises, such as Eskom, the electricity utility. Also in the top three topics was an undertaking to “spend public funds wisely and cut wasteful expenditure”. Less than 100 words were spoken on the subject of education, which ranked 17th on our word-count scale, all of it on cost of higher education.

Education ranked eighth this year, with the president talking mostly about the government’s ASIDI school infrastructure initiative. But the country’s electricity shortage, described by the president as “an impediment to economic growth and is a major inconvenience to everyone in the country” and financial problems at state electricity utility Eskom, rose to the top spot this year.

This was President Zuma’s first SONA after the 2014 national elections. He had a lot to say about the performance of local government, outlining his action plan to help municipalities overcome their challenges, many of which had sparked sometimes violent protests. Electricity challenges ranked second. Education made it into the top 12, with Zuma saying the aim was to have 250,000 grade 12 getting university entrance passes by 2019.

Besides the state of the economy, violent protests featured prominently. “The dominant narrative in the case of the protests in South Africa has been to attribute them to alleged failures of government. However the protests are not simply the result of ‘failures’ of government but also of the success in delivering basic services,” the president told the nation. Education was ranked fourth: it was a celebration of the government’s achievements in increasing the number of children enrolled in schools, particularly no-fee schools, as well as the school nutrition programme.