Budget 2023: Tough choices for Godongwana to fix problems of the ANC’s own making  

21 January 2023  

Note to editor:  In his absence, ActionSA President, Herman Mashaba, has designated ActionSA Eastern Cape Provincial Chairperson and former Member of Parliament, Athol Trollip, the party’s spokesperson on the 2023 Budget.

When Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana delivers his second budget speech tomorrow afternoon, he will be faced with several tough choices on how to fix South Africa’s ailing fiscal environment, and more importantly, to ignite economic growth. 

Most, if not all, of these choices, are borne of the ANC’s ineffectual governance of the state and the public purse. Specifically, years of poor policy decisions, mismanagement and corruption. From Eskom to the public sector wage bill and the universal basic income grant, South Africa is facing a number of tough obstacles with which it must grapple, and the solutions will be complex and at times a bitter pill to swallow for the ANC and it’s tripartite alliance partners if we are to jumpstart our anaemic economy.

South African citizens are now paying dearly for ANC failures, spending more of their hard-earned money to pay more for essential services such as electricity, refuse removal and sanitation despite those services being delivered less reliably than before. 

ActionSA believes that chief among the issues Minister Godongwana will have to address is how to fix the debt crisis at Eskom, which threatens to derail the entity’s unbundling, and has been a bottleneck for investment in the country’s transmission network, thereby limiting independent power producers’ ability to contribute generation capacity to the electricity grid.

ActionSA believes that social grants should be a temporary measure to assist the most vulnerable in society, while long-term economic growth is what creates job opportunities and independence from these grants and that will ignite job creation that will lift the majority of our people out of poverty. 

For too long, South Africa and the ANC government have been unable to attract adequate investment to stimulate sufficient economic growth which has meant that the country has grown poorer in real terms, while more of our people are jobless and left extremely vulnerable to economic shocks such as rising fuel and food prices. 

Meanwhile, the ANC and President Cyril Ramaphosa's promises of turning South Africa into a construction site with infrastructure investment, to ignite economic growth has yet to materialise. There is simply nothing to show for President Ramaphosa's R100 billion infrastructure fund. 

ActionSA believes that without fixing the fundamental impediments to South Africa’s economy such as a lack of competition, failing utilities in freight rail and electricity, and growing red tape, no amount of money will be able to ignite economic growth.

South Africa has the potential to be once again the economic engine of Africa which will create countless jobs and lift our people out of poverty, and in 2024 we have a real opportunity to achieve this dream when ActionSA is voted into government. 

Issued by Atholl Trollip, ActionSA Eastern Cape Provincial Chairperson, 21 February 2023