South Africans have probably learnt more about budgetary and parliamentary rules in the past few months than they ever expected or even wanted to know.
Last week the National Assembly passed the Appropriations Bill, which is one of two key pieces of legislation that enable the budget to be implemented.
The Division of Revenue Bill enables the revenue government collects to be divided between its three arms; the Appropriations Bill allows the spending pencilled into the budget to flow unimpeded.
Both processes have been fraught with tensions in the government of national unity (GNU), which was brought to the brink of collapse on the eve of the Wednesday vote on the Appropriations Bill before President Cyril Ramaphosa hastily fired scandal-hit higher education minister Nobuhle Nkabane on Monday evening.
The DA had threatened to vote against her budget, and that of the allegedly corrupt human settlements minister Thembi Simelane — as well as oppose the Appropriations Bill itself if Ramaphosa didn’t act against unethical or corrupt ministers.
As it turned out, if any of the 42 budget votes don’t gain parliament’s approval the Appropriations Bill can’t be passed. And the rules say if the bill doesn’t go through, the government can only disburse 45% of last year’s allocation in the first four months of the fiscal year, then 10% more a month up to the total of last year’s spending. According to deputy finance minister David Masondo, that would have meant — rather puzzlingly — that the government would have run out of money by October.
Fortunately, the crisis has now been averted. It’s not clear who Ramaphosa thinks he’s kidding when he claims Nkabane’s firing was not the DA’s doing and he was going to fire her anyway. He clearly didn’t do it without being pushed.
Revelations in this weekend’s Sunday Times show just how deep the rot went in the sector education & training authorities (Setas) over which she presided, and about which she deceived and dodged parliament. They highlight her arrogance too. If we didn’t have questions already about Ramaphosa’s judgment when it comes to his cabinet ministers, we certainly would now.
But another lesson from the Appropriations Bill drama is — again — just how fragile and immature our coalition government is.
It still is the government with the best chance of delivering better economic growth and services for South Africans.
But the two largest parties increasingly seem to hate each other. The ANC still plays bully boy as if it has a majority. The DA’s strategy of being both insider and outsider is problematic, and the party has not done as well by SA as it could have with its challenges to the budget.
At least we at last have a budget. And the instructions to government departments that the Treasury issued last week hold out the hope that the budget process will be more consultative in future — and, crucially, that government spending will be more efficient and effective.
The Treasury issues the new medium-term expenditure framework technical guidelines every year at about this time, to guide departments and public entities as they apply for their new budget allocations.
This is always the first big step in a lengthy budget process that takes shape in the October-November medium-term budget policy statement and culminates in the February main budget.
However, this year’s guidelines differ in some important and welcome ways from previous ones.
They formally commit the government to a new fiscal anchor, even though they make it clear this is unlikely to be a hard numerical rule such as a debt ceiling.
They introduce a new targeted and responsible savings (Tars) mechanism to identify and remove low-priority or underperforming programmes from the budget, so as to cut spending or reallocate it to priority areas.
They hard wire spending reviews into the budget process. The DA urged these during the budget disputes, and the Treasury has long pushed for them to be implemented.
Finance minister Enoch Godongwana said early on that the upside of the budget debacle was that it might force the GNU to face budget trade-offs, tailoring spending to limited public resources to serve South Africans better.
We can but hope.
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