With social media abuzz about President Cyril Ramaphosa’s “missing” R500bn stimulus package, South Africans should start asking questions about another R1.6bn commitment that has vanished into thin air. Since he became president there has been a disturbing trend whereby Ramaphosa makes big announcements when he is under pressure, which Treasury later cancels. This makes one wonder whether SA has a parallel government.
In September 2018, soon after Stats SA announced that there had been a recession in the first two quarters, Ramaphosa announced the establishment of a R400bn “blended finance” infrastructure fund to kick-start the economy. However, during the February 2020 budget — 17 months after the president’s announcement — the Treasury made no allocation to the infrastructure fund for this financial year.
On April 21, the president announced the government would spend R100bn on job creation and small and medium enterprises as part of its Covid-19 stimulus package. Two months later the Treasury allocated R6bn.
In his February 2020 state of the nation address, Ramaphosa announced a plan to top-slice 1% of the budget from every department, totalling about R18bn, to be spent on initiatives to address youth unemployment. He said the finance minister would make an announcement in his medium-term budget policy statement in October. The Treasury will cancel this commitment too.
On September 18, Ramaphosa convened a joint sitting of the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces on gender-based violence and femicide, after four weeks of national outrage following the rape and murder of University of Cape Town student Uyinene Mrwetyana. The president said the cabinet had resolved to direct R1.1bn in additional funding “in this financial year” to a comprehensive response to gender-based violence and femicide. In parliament on October 31 2019, Ramaphosa said an additional R500m had been allocated.
On November 8 2019, the department of women, youth & people with disabilities said R1.6bn had been allocated for the implementation of the gender-based violence emergency action plan, which had outlined actions that could be implemented within the next six months. Funding had been committed by different government departments and partners.
However, there was no mention of the allocation in Treasury’s medium-term budget policy statement at the end of October 2019. There were few details of the R1.6bn allocation in the February 2020 budget. The department received an additional R15m to establish a national council to address gender-based violence and femicide.
During the June 2020 supplementary budget, the department’s meagre R778.5m budget for 2020/2021 was cut by R137.5m to R645.2m. However, R392.2m of the revised budget (60.8%) will go to the National Youth Development Agency. The Commission for Gender Equality will get R89.9m or 13.9% of the department’s budget.
The remaining R163.1m, 25% of the revised budget, will have to cover all the other areas of the department’s mandate. This will leave little to address other areas of the department’s mandate relating to women, including gender-based violence and femicide. The department must be either closed or provided with a proper budget.
The Budget Justice Coalition (BJC) has been following the mystery allocation and made numerous submissions to parliament about the “missing” R1.6bn. In a recent presentation to legislators, the organisation said: “The BJC is seriously concerned that the supplementary Budget Review makes no mention of allocating resources to what the president has referred to as another pandemic of violence against women and children.
“In May, the much anticipated national plan on gender-based violence and femicide was finalised, but without any budget information. If this plan is not adequately and reliably funded it will not be worth the paper that it is written on. With this budget we again see the pattern of failure to allocate towards initiatives to intervene in this second pandemic.”
• Gqubule is founding director at the Centre for Economic Development and Transformation.
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