South Africa’s Minister of Finance, Mr Enoch Godongwana (2nd from left) and his finance brains trust before the delivery of the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) in Parliament on November 1, 2024. From the point of view of the ANC as the leading political party in the GNU, it is a case of assisted suicide as it insanely continues with the very same neoliberal policies that saw it lose voter support and its parliamentary majority, says the writer. Picture: Jairus Mmutle/GCIS
Dr. Trevor Ngwane
TALK is cheap, money buys the whisky. The 2024 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) tabled by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana in parliament recently is an accurate indicator of where the newly formed Government of National Unity (GNU) is leading the country after 30 years of democracy. As far as the working class and the poor are concerned it is out of the frying pan into the fire.
Godongwana’s plans give credence to the view that South Africa is led by a Government of Neoliberal Unity. From the point of view of the ANC as the leading political party in the GNU, it is a case of assisted suicide as it insanely continues with the very same neoliberal policies that saw it lose voter support and its parliamentary majority. Helping the ANC along this path of political self-destruction are the other members of the GNU, especially the DA, IFP and FF-Plus, who incessantly cajole, coax and coerce the ANC into deepening its commitment to implementing pro-rich and anti-poor neoliberal policies.
The masses fought a valiant struggle against apartheid, a form of racial capitalism engendered by settler colonialism. Great sacrifices were made by people from diverse race, class and national backgrounds, including some living in various parts of the world, culminating in a victory against the apartheid regime and the ushering in of democracy. Unfortunately, the victory came during a time when capitalism dealt socialism a fatal blow with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of neoliberalism. The latter is a historical form of capitalism that is characterized by the removal of all mechanisms that seek to control big business and its profit mongering at the expense of everyone except the richest one percent in society.
Key features of neoliberalism include deregulation, privatization, financialization, labour flexibility and the removal of exchange controls. The rich got spectacularly richer under this global regime of the unfettered dominance of capital over the whole world. The gap between the rich and poor became bigger than at any other time in the history of humanity. The triumphant capitalist class used its power and money to force all governments to succumb to its rule and serve its interests. This included states under the political control of social democratic, socialist and communist parties.
How has the working class fared under this untrammelled greed and arrogance of the capitalist class? In South Africa, everyday life is a nightmare for ordinary people. Everything is a problem for the working class and the poor: water, electricity, housing, healthcare, education, transport, safety and security, etc. The question is: Will Godongwana’s MTBPS help alleviate this hardship and suffering? The answer is no.
“Over the medium term, the government will focus on maintaining macroeconomic stability, implementing structural reforms, building state capability and supporting growth-enhancing public infrastructure investment,” says the MTBPS. The language and economic approach come straight from the neoliberal pro-capitalist playbook of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The structural reforms envisaged include the unbundling of Eskom into generation, transmission and distribution to facilitate entry of the private sector and the profit motive in the provision of energy.
People living in the townships, villages and shack settlements of South Africa know what this means. While the finance minister celebrated the end of loadshedding, load reduction, exorbitant electricity tariffs, discriminatory response to service faults, and the scapegoating of black working-class areas for the energy crisis ensures that living in darkness continues to be normalized for the majority of the people. Energy racism lives from the days of apartheid to the neoliberal democratic South Africa.
Acting on behalf of the international bourgeoisie, the World Bank and IMF insist on postcolonial economies prioritising debt payment when drawing up their national budgets. The MTBPS endorses how the “national government and Gauteng Province took over R47 billion” debt owed by the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) after the spectacular failure of the e-tolls and its revenue collection programme associated with the construction of World Cup highways. The people of Gauteng will pay a minimum of R13.1 billion of this debt. This is despite the socioeconomic crisis of poverty and unemployment and its attendant social ills such as drug and alcohol abuse, crime and GBV that are tearing the province apart.
The Finance Minister’s neoliberal handlers would not have been happy if he had left out the salutary attack on the public sector wage. “We are also implementing initiatives like early retirement, not to merely reduce the size of the workforce, but also to introduce younger talent to the public service. This is part of building a capable, ethical and developmental government,” said the Minister. No amount of sugarcoating can remove the bitter taste of neoliberal austerity from this plan whose effect will be to reduce the capacity of the state to provide much needed social support and services in a crisis-ridden economy.
“For over a decade, South Africa has significantly underperformed compared with other emerging market and developing countries,” says the Minister. Furthermore, “the economy is projected to grow by 1.1 per cent in 2024, down from the 2024 Budget Review forecast of 1.3 per cent.” There is no indication whatsoever that the Minister and the GNU whose budget he was presenting has in mind a set of radical reforms that might pull the country out of its economic quagmire. No, it is more of the same. The absence of an alternative economic approach and ideology ties the ANC, PAC, UDM and other parties who claim to represent the black working class to a futile strategy of sharing responsibility for the failures of the capitalist system.
Neocolonial policies that reproduce the sale of commodities, maintain low wages and facilitate the repatriation of profits to our former colonisers continue under the GNU. The latter represents nothing but the formalization of the toenadering between white monopoly capital and the aspirant black bourgeoisie at the expense of the masses. Godongwana’s budget must be rejected by the working class.
* DR TREVOR NGWANE is an activist scholar and senior lecturer at the University of Johannesburg.
** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of The African.