Dr. Trevor Ngwane
The South African government’s postponement of the tabling of the 2025 budget was a shocker.
The decision to postpone was made ten minutes before Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, was expected to take the podium. Bewildered parliamentarians, journalists, and guests listened unbelievingly as the Speaker of the National Assembly, Thoko Didiza, announced the making of a fiasco because the Government of National Unity (GNU) disagreed with the budget.
The Speaker allowed the stunned parliamentarians to vent their frustration at this ‘unprecedented’ development – in 31 years the post-apartheid government had never postponed a budget speech.
Members of political parties that are not part of the GNU were especially thrown off. Julius Malema, leader of the EFF, said the government had ‘collapsed because they cannot present a budget’.
The postponement was a national crisis, said Mzwanele Manyi, Chief Whip of MKP.The culprits in the postponement attempted to put a positive spin on the debacle.
The DA, FF+ and PA party leaders suggested that what had just happened was ‘democracy’ as it showed that South Africa ‘is not a one-party state.’
The ANC hitherto had made decisions on its own, but it was learning the hard way that it had lost its majority and had to consult other parties. Godongwana admitted in the subsequent media briefing that he only told the cabinet on the morning of the budget speech that the VAT hike would be 2%, adding that budgets are not negotiated but declared.
The markets were equally spooked by developments with the rand and share prices dropping after the postponement. It was necessary to stop the sky from falling, to stem a significant fallout in the markets and a plunge in the rand by giving the whole thing a positive spin.
The DA’s reckless assault on ANC executive power risked plunging the country into an economic crisis. It had to deploy its propaganda machinery to prove that the GNU was working normally and that what had happened was good for the country. DA leaders claimed the status of white knights defending the poor against a regressive tax imposed by a corrupt and self-serving ANC.
The sky did not fall, and the markets have not (yet) panicked about the GNU and its ability to run South Africa. This has boosted the DA’s claim to victory over the ANC and its aspirations to be a powerful actor in the GNU.
The DA might have been emboldened by Trump’s recent attacks on the ANC for oppressing Afrikaners and expropriating their land. It was going to rely on the votes of the EFF and MKP to block the passing of the budget had Godongwana not capitulated, parties the DA detests and demonises, suggesting a Trump-like shameless political brinkmanship.
The budget fiasco did not happen simply because the ANC is slow to realise that it has lost its political dominance. Nor because of ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa’s poor political management of the divergent parties and political positions contained in the GNU.
As Russian revolutionary Lenin explained, ‘Politics is a concentrated expression of economics.’
The rivalry in the GNU is about proving that your party is the best one that can protect and promote the private property and profits of the capitalist class.The DA’s desperate tactics to steal the limelight after several months of lacklustre performance and being overshadowed by the ANC in the GNU is an important factor.
Unfortunately, the fiasco coincided with South Africa’s hosting of a meeting of G20 finance ministers.
The G20 is an international body consisting of 20 of the world’s major economies. South Africa’s presidency of the G20 was supposed to be the ANC and the country's best moment. Trump’s recent racist attacks on South Africa, representing the rise of rightwing populism in the world, is another fly in the ointment.
The racist, sexist and xenophobic politics that is characteristic of rightwing populism can be traced back to the crisis of capitalism as a political and economic system. The triumphalism of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s eroded the values of social solidarity, human rights and economic equality that had thrived during the capitalist economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s that gave birth to the welfare state.
The G20 was formed in the aftermath of the 2008 global economic meltdown when the G7 realised its inability to solve the crisis and brought in other countries based on neoliberal economics.
The decline of the USA as a global superpower reflects the crisis and decline of capitalism as a world system.
As Antonio Gramsci wrote: ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.’
On the right, we see the morbidities of the rise of neofascist, authoritarian, dog-eat-dog, neoliberal politics such as Trump’s desire to impose tariffs on virtually all of the USA’s trading partners.
On the left, are the morbidities of the capitulation of social democratic parties such as the ANC to neoliberalism and the authoritarian capitalist restoration taking place in China and Russia.
The South African government chose the theme ‘solidarity, equality, sustainability’ for its hosting of the G20. The Trump administration considers these three words ‘at odds with its views on climate change and diversity policies.’
Our Minister of Finance appears to take a leaf from Trump’s book when he wants the country to make brutal false choices between cutting social expenditure, increasing taxes or borrowing. This approach is imprisoned in the zero-sum logic of neoliberal capitalism.
The working class and the poor should avoid the politics of class collaboration and adjust to the neoliberal politics of the rightwing. The struggle must continue behind the vision of building a new world free from all traces of domination, oppression and exploitation. That is our demand to the G20 and the world.
* Dr. Trevor Ngwane is a Sociology senior lecturer at the University of Johannesburg.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.