Herding chickens with a fox loose in the henhouse

Who would want to be Pravin Gordhan this week? Our finance minister is a stand-up kind of guy who doesn't back off a challenge, but even he must be feeling the flap of a butterfly amidships.

Gordhan must deliver the 2017 Budget speech in parliament tomorrow in daunting circumstances. He must make rands and cents add up neatly in a ledger that has delinquents and hooligans tearing at its pages. We refer, of course, to the ANC faction aligned to President Jacob Zuma that simply wants to gorge itself on public money.

For Gordhan, it's like trying to herd chickens with a fox loose in the henhouse. That fox's name is Zupta.

One miscalculation by the minister and the fox will turn its fangs on him. Indeed, it might not even take a false move: he could simply be savaged in the name of "radical economic transformation" - the latest slogan thrown up to hide the government's own bungling.

• Personal income tax 'likely to rise'With increases in VAT and corporate income tax unlikely to be announced in Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's Budget tomorrow, the only option was for personal income tax rates to increase, the head of the Davis Tax Committee, Judge Dennis Davis, said yesterday.

Purely on the numbers front, Gordhan is facing a budget shortfall of about R5-billion, which he'll have to try to contain through increased revenue (higher taxes) and spending cuts.

The latter should be the focus, with a thoroughgoing crackdown on corruption potentially bringing many billions into the coffers. The auditor-general's report for 2016 put irregular state expenditure at R46-billion. But Zuma's many corruption-busting promises have proven hollow.

Simply slashing budgets is tricky, with Zupta placemen in government departments unlikely to be in any way accommodating.

So, we can expect tax-bracket shuffling in the middle- to higher-income areas - but even here the wriggle room is limited: 30% of citizens are responsible for 70% of the fiscus and they can't be squeezed much more.

It's a no-brainer that sin taxes will be hiked, and health scares about sugar offer a sweet spot for a brand new tax.

Tinkering with value-added tax is dangerous, given that it affects everyone and could be used in any populist narrative against the finance minister. If we could look forward to future growth in the economy, Gordhan could paint a rosier picture, but that is not an option with no one expecting even 2% annual growth in the next few years. Growth is constrained by ineffectual government policy on industrialisation, policy uncertainty all over the shop and a chronic lack of skills capacity - not to mention a volatile labour environment.

Pravin, mate, you have our heartfelt sympathy.