Dear friends and fellow South Africans,
Speaking in Congo Brazzaville on Tuesday, President Zuma declared that it is up to the middle class to find solutions to South Africa's problems. This reminded me of headlines around the e-toll saga: "Middle class likely to foot the bill", and headlines following last year's budget speech: "Middle class lose out the most".
South Africa places enormous pressure on its middle class. The "middle class" is defined as anyone over the age of 16 living in a household where the combined monthly income is between R16 000 and R50 000. These are households in which one or more family members are employed. In other words, the middle class are predominantly taxpayers.
In South Africa, we expect our taxpayers to finance development, governance, administration and infrastructure, as well as the vast social grant system. Beyond funding the laudable and the necessary, a great deal of taxpayers' money is lost to mismanagement and wastage. Each year R21,4 billion is lost to corruption.
We have asked taxpayers to finance Eskom's build programme. We asked taxpayers to spend over R200 million to upgrade the President's home in Nkandla. We asked taxpayers to foot the R100 million bill for the NYDA's "kissing festival". We had taxpayers pay another R100 million for the infamous ICT Indaba.
Year after year, we ask taxpayers to bail out state-owned enterprises, like South African Airways and Denel, which consistently fail to turn a profit.