Brace for true reflection of the state of the nation

When Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson faced off in the 1992 movie 'A Few Good Men', it created one of the more memorable movie interactions that year.

Cruise (military lawyer Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee) questions Nicholson (Colonel Nathan R Jessep) about his role in the deaths of US marines.

Jessep: You want answers?

Kaffee: I think I'm entitled to.

Jessep: You want answers?

Kaffee: I want the truth!

Jessep (barely able to contain his rage): You can't handle the truth!

It's a script our parliament seems to be following, with a mixture of obfuscation, signal jamming and mass ejections of MPs stealing the headlines while the truth about the state of the nation is becoming ever harder to discern.

Ten days after the state of the nation address fiasco, South Africans have a pretty good idea about the state of the politics of the nation but very little idea about what state the nation is in. The real state of the nation will be revealed this week when Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene delivers his maiden budget.

It is unlikely to be particularly palatable, but it's a truth we need to hear. Rather than deal with substantive issues affecting the daily life of millions of South Africans - unemployment, skills shortages, housing and basic sanitation - opposition MPs used the precious minutes allocated to them to respond to the president's address, seeking a narrower but equally important truth: the president's fitness for public office. It was stirring stuff but hardly useful in terms of addressing the needs of the electorate.

The president has succeeded in avoiding answering multiple awkward questions that in many other constitutional democracies would have had a head of state seeking a pardon from their successor and retiring to a quiet private life. But the constant haranguing, although politically pivotal, is distracting from substantive life-and-death issues.

It will be left to the finance minister to deliver South Africa's annual financial health check.

Like the annual GP's probing for men over a certain age, it is intimate, uncomfortable and not for the squeamish.

The budget has four distinct features and Nene has the unenviable task of having to balance all of them.

There is income in the form of the taxes you and your business pay. This is under huge pressure, because of low growth and mounting concern over the future efficacy of the South African Revenue Service as seasoned technocrats bolt for the door.

There is expenditure, with everything from rising interest bills on existing debt to ballooning civil service wage demands and social grants, plus of course the petty cash needed for the odd extension to a private residence.

Then there is the issue of government and parastatal debt, which has been growing in recent years at an escalating pace.

Plus the most difficult of all - the hopes, aspirations and desires of an electorate in an increasingly competitive political landscape.

There is never enough of the first, always too much of the second, and the third is unlikely to show any sign of contraction any time soon. And a more robust political environment means more South Africans are expecting more from the government.

Will the minister be able to generate more tax revenue without raising taxes? Well, no.

Without sufficient electricity to stimulate industry to create the jobs that pay the taxes, the only way to go is up. In what is rapidly becoming something of a textbook for left-leaning governments around the world, there is a distinct possibility that the National Treasury might seek to implement some of the ideas put forward in 2014's most influential book, Capital, by the French economist Thomas Piketty, who proposes that the wealthy should pay not just their fair share but be compelled to contribute some of their considerable wealth for the greater good.

By now, the Davis tax committee would have made recommendations to the Treasury, but it's been disturbingly quiet on that front.

Will he cut spending? Superficially, yes.

Fewer canapés here, a cheaper hotel room there and a couple fewer flights for civil servants won't go very far towards tackling the elephant in the room - ballooning government debt. The minister has promised to reduce the deficit, and ratings agencies are watching and waiting to see how he will do so.

The best way out of a crisis usually comes through accelerated growth. He has very few levers to pull, so how much will the minister be able to depend on global growth to help lift the domestic economy out of a stodgy 2% growth trap?

Free Market Foundation economist Loane Sharp this week suggested we could get 4% GDP growth this year.

Sharp's argument is that a combination of a US recovery and quantitative easing in Europe and Japan would do enough to fuel demand again for commodities and other key exports from South Africa.

It's enticing. But, sadly, unlikely.

Whitfield is an award-winning financial journalist, broadcaster and writer