The South African Cabinet met in Pretoria on Wednesday, making final touches to the State of the Nation Address (Sona) – a key milestone of the country's busy political calendar.

"This is the start of the Cabinet Lekgotla, which will end on Friday, led by the President Jacob Zuma and together with the Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa. This is our first engagement [for 2018] as Cabinet, looking at preparations for the year, mainly preparing first for the Sona and preparing for our budget speech," Communications Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane said in Pretoria.

"We will go into various areas of work. The main focus should be around the economy. We will be looking at various issues around the economy, growing the economy, creating jobs as part of our work as government and Cabinet."

The high level meeting, chaired by Zuma, is attended Cabinet ministers, their deputies, and director-generals of various government departments.

"On Friday, as normal, as you know, we will be joined by the Premiers [of all nine South African provinces] and together with the local government representatives as part of ensuring that [in] our work as government we enforce inter-government relations,  making sure that what we planned goes across between national government, provincial and locals," Kubayi-Ngubane said.

"So that is what mainly we are doing here. More details will be outlined of what has been discussed in the Sona because we can never say exactly in details what is it that we are doing for this year until it has been outlined in the Sona."

When journalists were ushered in momentarily for a photo opportunity in the room hall where the meeting was being held at the Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guesthouse in Pretoria, a jovial Zuma was sipping a cup of coffee, making jokes with the reporters and his deputy Ramaphosa.