A coalition of 10 civil society organisations have called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to censure finance minister Enoch Godongwana following comments he made in the Sunday Times at the weekend.
In the article, Godongwana, who is expected to deliver the 2025 budget speech on Wednesday, weeks after it was postponed when the DA objected to the minister’s plans to hike VAT by two percentage points, “asserted that he is not required to consult on the budget outside of ANC leadership, due to market sensitivity, and that ideally he should consult as few people as possible”.
The organisations including the Institute for Economic Justice, #PayTheGrants, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu), Black Sash, and the Alternative Information and Development Centre, said: “These comments exposed the minister’s lack of regard for the democratic process and the constitution. In making them he has misled the public, sought to pit the poor against each other and attempted to use the press to secure National Treasury’s preferred policy outcome over the will of cabinet.”
The minister’s remarks were “openly contemptuous of his responsibility to the ANC’s coalition partners, those who voted for them, the expertise of government departments, and our participatory democracy”.
“What Godongwana’s remarks amount to is an ultimatum: Choose between cuts to basic services like health and education, a significant hike in living costs (via VAT), or the life-saving social relief of distress (SRD) grant. In each scenario, it is the poorest that are being asked to make an impossible sacrifice,” said the organisation, which includes My Vote Counts, Extinction Rebellion (Gauteng), Makause Community Development Forum, Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia and Green Hope Foundation.
“The minister and National Treasury have long been ideologically opposed to the SRD grant. This grant is the bulwark that staves off hunger for 8-million direct recipients and their 16-million dependants. National Treasury has sought to remove it from the budget on numerous occasions and successfully limited its scope through barriers that the Pretoria high court has deemed unlawful,” the organisations said.
“Having lost the battle within government to dismantle the SRD grant, the minister chose to solicit a press interview to preempt and circumvent government policy. The minister did this by misleading the public, arguing that the VAT increase was ‘necessary’ because the SRD grant required an unplanned budget allocation.”
Godongwana was quoted as saying in the article: “If you allowed me to cut the SRD, I wouldn’t increase anything. I’m faced with increased expenditures which are not in the budget.”
The civil society organisation said the minister’s comments, “given exclusively to the largest newspaper in the country just three days before the new budget is scheduled to be announced, are not only calculated but also highly irresponsible”.
“They are made in an attempt to maintain the upper hand in closed-door negotiations. Such a lack of responsibility must be met with proportionate censure. The minister and National Treasury were given the opportunity to fix the crisis they created on February 19, but their mismanagement of the budget process again threatens to plunge the country into another deep crisis.”
The organisations called on Ramaphosa to ensure Godongwana shows “due regard for democratic processes and mandates, and is appropriately censured. The government as a whole must end the era of impunity for National Treasury, which, together with the minister of finance, must not be allowed to act unilaterally and defy the collective will of government”.
Godongwana’s spokesperson, Mfuneko Toyana, said: “We won’t be commenting until the minister tables the budget.”
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