BudgetSpeech2020 judith_february writes: As ever in South Africa, we waft between this hope and despair. Mboweni’s Budget Speech shows us there's no inevitability to the despair. Ramaphosa simply needs to follow Mboweni’s example and be brave.
Ahead of Wednesday’s Budget Speech, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni tweeted a picture of himself and President Ramaphosa discussing ‘final preparations’ for his speech. They looked pretty relaxed, despite the severe economic and political strain the country faces.
Mboweni was upbeat as he entered the House bearing an aloe ferox plant with quotes ranging from the Bible to Pliny the Elder. The hollowing out of Sars due to looting and corruption has serious consequences. New commissioner Edward Kieswetter is on a mission to fix the institution but it will take time.
The perpetrators walk amongst us and some, like former President Zuma, have only sought to add insult to our collective injury by doing whatever he can to avoid his day in court. ‘The Year of Orange Overalls’, as Archbishop Thabo Makgoba puts it, seems very far away. In this 2020 speech, there were, however, bailouts of R60 billion for Eskom and SAA over the next three years. Eskom, which was allocated R23 billion a year for the next decade in the 2019 Budget, will receive these allocations over seven years rather than 10. This means that although Eskom does not receive additional resources in the 2020 budget, it will nevertheless receive substantial support of R112 billion over the three-year budget period.
But the motif of this Budget - forgetting the aloe forex plant and how it stores water - is the brave wager that Mboweni has made. Politically, Mboweni is a bit of an ‘outlier’. He is hardly within the inner circle of the ANC and he is an unorthodox thinker. His economic blueprint released in late August 2019 received a mixed response. It included a nod to privatisation, ease of doing business regulations and an attempt to increase growth to 3% while creating a million jobs. It also suggested selling off power utility Eskom’s coal-powered stations.
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