A bitter budget battle awaits in Parliament

There is supposedly an ancient Chinese curse along the lines of “May you live in interesting times”.

South Africa is certainly living through such times at the moment, with the brewing battle over the budget.

But, we will have to wait and see whether those times will turn out to be a blessing or a scourge.

There is bound to be a brutal fight in parliament in the next few weeks as Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana tries to push through the government’s plan for revenue and spending for 2025-26.

That’s because, although the previous announcement was aborted due to disagreement in the government of national unity (GNU) over a proposed two percentage-point hike in VAT, the revised, and radically toned down, budget has been allowed to be presented.

However, there is still no agreement within the GNU about the new proposed VAT increase, pegged at 0.5 percentage points for this year and a similar amount for 2026.

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Other parties outside the GNU are also forming a broad anti-VAT front, which straddles ideological boundaries.

Failure to pass the budget won’t immediately bring government services and state-owned enterprises grinding to a halt but by October, according to experts, things will start falling apart.

That’s the possible scourge which lies ahead.

The blessing, though, is that this year, for the first time in the history of a democratic South Africa, the ANC cannot do what it wants with the budget.

That, coupled with the power-sharing arrangement in the GNU, has made some of its loudmouth leaders a lot quieter and, perhaps, more accommodating.

And that spirit of compromise and cooperation – tinged as it may be with angry words and hurt feelings – is just what this country needs to get out of the rut into which it has been slowly sliding for the past two decades.

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