A VIEW OF THE WEEK: Got money problems MPs? What about the rest of us?

Payday came and went for many employed South Africans this week, leaving them in no better position than they were the week before.

More than 10 million South Africans, or a third of those who have credit, are in serious debt, missing payments, or facing legal action. A lack of money to sustain themselves and their families is a daily depressant and anxiety that threatens to spiral.

Meanwhile, parliamentarians, who earn salaries and perks worth over R100 000 a month, were fighting over the country’s money. A country that, on average, only pays its workers around a quarter of that, R28 231.

Where is the money going to come from?

Amid a deadlock, members of parliament’s finance committees argued that the budget should be sent back to Treasury to find the money from somewhere other than a Value-Added Tax (VAT) increase.

Where this loose change is going to come from is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it’s stashed in a couch or a fancy suit pants pocket?

But the plea is a familiar one for the average South African, who asks themselves at the end of every month where the money went. “Surely, there must be some left over I can use to survive the month?” they reason with themselves.

The fact that the proposed 1% Value-Added Tax hike over 2 years was almost universally condemned by the committees will at least keep up the pretence that political decision-makers care.

But then you reach the till to draw your grant or pay for groceries and realise that you are very much alone in the fight.

If only you could send a school fees statement or municipal bill back for review and ask them to find the money elsewhere.

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Where did all the money go?

Sure, it could be worse, but it should also be better.

Corruption and wasteful expenditure have robbed the country of billions, and the citizens have to foot the bill nearly every time.

Mismanagement and putting political aspirations over public service have also failed to fix a crippling unemployment rate of nearly 42%, or 16.5 million not economically active citizens.

As debt mounts and SA becomes a welfare state, the Treasury and the finance minister have tried to “protect” the taxpayer cash cow. But now they have finally run out of road.

Years of incompetence, financial negligence, and indulgence by a few have caught up with us as a country, and it’s a grim reality that is facing all of us.

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‘Temporary’ relief

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula tried to reassure the nation that the country’s money problems are “only temporary” and a VAT increase would be reversed as soon as we are on a better footing.

I also once held such illusions, and I’ll offer Mbalula a lesson for free: it never gets better. You only stick your head in the sand deeper until you can’t breathe anymore.

His party’s power in government may be the only “temporary” thing about to change, and its influence the only thing in reverse.

He batted away calls for austerity, auditing, and accountability as principles of governance by saying the party had already received the lecture from its leader, Cyril Ramaphosa.

If so, were they listening and what have they since done to follow that advice? A 30-year track record shows little progress and doesn’t fill any citizen with confidence that things will change now.

The money to save South Africa is somewhere, but please, parliamentarian, let it not be “found” in our already empty pockets.

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