Western Cape submits section 79 petition to President Cyril Ramaphosa on constitutionality of the 2020 Division of Revenue Second Amendment Bill
30 November 2020
On Friday, 27 November 2020, Premier Alan Winde and I submitted a section 79 petition to President Cyril Ramaphosa to bring to his attention material concerns over the constitutionality of certain aspects of the 2020 Division of Revenue Second Amendment (DoRA 2) Bill which was passed by Parliament on Thursday, 26 November 2020.
When Minister Tito Mboweni tabled his Medium Term Budget Policy on 28 October 2020, he confirmed that the Western Cape Provincial Budget would be cut by R2.396 billion in the 2020/21 financial year for compensation of employees following National Treasury’s decision to freeze wages.
Importantly, while the Western Cape does support National Treasury’s overall goal of decreasing the public sector wage bill, the way that they have proceeded in the 2020/21 financial year has raised significant concern for the Western Cape, as it has with other provincial governments as well.
Essentially, National Treasury have transferred significant risk to provinces, by pre-emptively cutting our budgets. This assumes that they will win their court case against the unions on the wage agreement, an assumption which is far from certain.