In the weeks before the Finance Minister presenting a revised budget on March 12, the Government of National Unity’s parties will discuss the budget at the Cabinet level and within GNU’s structures. Picture: Phando Jikelo / Parliament of SA
Parties in the Government of National Unity (GNU) are preparing to discuss the budget proposal for the 2025/26 financial year in the brief time allotted by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana before tabling a revised proposal.
This occurs when GNU meetings and Cabinet discussions take place following the postponement of Godongwana’s 2025 budget presentation on Wednesday due to the parties’ inability to come to an agreement.
The tax proposals, which the National Treasury want to use to generate R58 billion in the new financial year, were at the centre of the disagreement.
In a statement, President Cyril Ramaphosa assured South Africans that the Cabinet’s continuing deliberations on the budget will deliver outcomes that will protect vulnerable citizens and lay a platform for economic growth.
Ramaphosa confirmed that the postponement was the result of a disagreement, but also collegial and mature consensus within Cabinet that budget proposals be worked through comprehensively and productively to secure the wellbeing of the economy and individual citizens.
“We are called upon as the national leadership to pursue all initiatives aimed at growth in order for us to increase employment and alleviate the effects of poverty.
“The Government of National Unity will in the coming days and weeks intensify our efforts to balance the imperatives that drive the fundamental growth objectives of this administration with the realities of a constrained fiscal environment,” he said.
GOOD Party secretary-general Brett Herron said the GNU party leader’s forum met with Ramaphosa and received a briefing on the draft budget.
“I expect that the National Treasury will brief the leaders on proposed revisions. GOOD is obviously represented at these engagements by our leader, Patricia de Lille,” Herron said.
He also said Deputy President Paul Mashatile has also called a “clearing house” meeting for next week.
“I will attend that but the agenda has not been issued yet so I don’t know if the budget will be discussed,” Herron said.
DA spokesperson Willie Aucamp said his party has put up certain proposals on the budget.
“We will again now drive those proposals we put forward in the Treasury and with the minister and try to persuade him that that is the way to go, not to increase taxes at all,” Aucamp said.
“We can cut spending and that is what the DA has proposed. We want a pro-growth budget. All those will be communicated as we have done in the past and we will put emphasis on that,” said Aucamp.
He said there would be interaction between the DA and the ANC as well as between the party’s officials and the National Treasury.
“I don’t have specific dates but seeing the budget must be delivered, it does not give us a lot of time. They will continuously be working on this,” Aucamp said
Freedom Front Plus chief whip Wouter Wessels said Godongwana was mandated to go back and consider proposals already made and then engage in consultations.
“The majority of discussions will be in the Cabinet. There will be mechanisms of the GNU to be utilised to ventilate some of these issues,” Wessels said.
He confirmed that Mashatile has convened a “clearing house” meeting for next week.
“There will be a lot of meetings of political leaders of parties in the GNU and one such meeting took place on Wednesday morning before the Cabinet meeting. There will be quite a number of those.”
University of the Western Cape political studies department’s Dr Jonathan Mark Hoskins said the tensions on the VAT was to be expected within the GNU.
“By its very nature, the GNU is built on competing visions for South Africa’s development. The parties involved not only hold different perspectives but in many cases, their viewpoints are deeply rooted in historically fractious divisions,” Hoskins said.
He also said the GNU was an unprecedented governance structure in South Africa.
“This is new political terrain. The process of finding a functional equilibrium within this coalition will inevitably lead to disagreements and standoffs. The current VAT dispute is just one of many such challenges that will arise,” Hoskins added.
mayibongwe.maqhina@inl.co.za