PALI LEHOHLA | The arithmetic of deceit: why the 2026 budget is a failure of anthropology

The mention of the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment has reached the lowest denominator of numerical visibility. This was not a mistake. It is a sign of the times, a fast-track return to insidious neoliberalism.

While in the past these received multiple mentions, albeit declining over time, in this budget speech they were definitively loud by their absence. They scored the lowest decibels and were drowned by structural reforms, economic growth, primary surplus, debt-to-GDP ratios, PPPs ― the language of the neoliberal.

Poverty, inequality and unemployment reached the lowest positive numerical frequency. By next year, if the regression model is any indication, they will get zero mentions.

Only once each “in summary”, the minister said: “Madam Speaker, the progressive realisation of the fundamental socioeconomic rights enshrined in our constitution is essential to our mission to deal with inequality, poverty and unemployment.”

Previously these triple challenges would be at the beginning, in the middle and at the end. But the defeat is clear, and only once before the speech ends is now good enough.

On the other hand in these hallowed chambers of parliament on February 25, the minister of finance delivered a speech hailed by the markets as a “return to sanity”.

He spoke of debt stabilisation at 78.9% of GDP, credit rating upgrades and the achievement of a primary surplus. To the bondholders in London and the ratings agencies in New York, it was a triumph of accounting.

But to the people living in the contiguous cramped meshes of the South Durban Basin, or the decimated school districts of the Eastern Cape, the speech was a spectacular failure of anthropology.

The minister is effectively staring at a heartbeat on a medical monitor — the fiscal stability of the state — while ignoring the reality that the patient’s limbs are undergoing advanced necrosis.

In the forensic framework of the Lehohla Ledger, a novel assessment tool developed by yours truly, we do not measure a nation by the neatness of its balance sheet but by the health of its metabolic soul. To ignore the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is to ignore the structural indigence that defines South Africa’s spatial geometry.

The fallacy of the ‘social wage’

The minister proudly proclaimed that the “social wage” now accounts for more than 60% of non-interest spending. In the cold language of the Treasury, this is “redistribution”. In the lived experience of the twined mesh of misery, this is “life support without healing”.

When we spend R292.8bn on social grants, but as our LISA (Local Indicators of Spatial Association) Maps continue to show deep blue “Low-Low” clusters of deprivation, we are witnessing a vulture-like vortex.

The MPI measures deprivations across three dimensions: health, education and living standards. If a household receives a grant but still lacks clean water, functional sanitation (what I call the Biko Standard), or the digital connectivity required for the modern economy, that grant money is inhaled by the poor only to be immediately exhaled into the pockets of extractive retail and telecommunications monopolies.

The minister treats the social wage as an output — a box ticked on a spreadsheet. The Lehohla Ledger treats it as an input that has failed to yield a structural outcome.

Until the social wage results in the breaking up of the “Low-Low” blue clusters on our spatial maps, it remains a performative intervention that funds survival while denying sovereignty.

Fiscal anchors vs human anchors

The 2026 budget’s obsession with a “principle-based fiscal anchor” is a masterclass in global appeasement. We have become a beggar nation, performing fiscal austerity to secure a social licence from the very global order that thrives on our extractive nature.

A responsible leader, following the architecture of Morena Mohlomi, would understand that a leader’s wealth is measured by the health of the people. Mohlomi’s leadership was anchored in the preservation of generational value. Therefore, a true “national anchor” should be an MPI Anchor.

The Ledger’s verdict is simple: if the fiscal anchor is stabilised but the MPI intensity in the South Durban Basin or the Eastern Cape increases, the social licence of the minister is revoked.

You cannot claim a “prosperous nation” when the spatial geometry of the country is characterised by systemic hypoxia — a state where the “blood” of the economy (capital and opportunity) never reaches the “limbs” of the township and the village.

The infrastructure disconnect: pipes for extraction

The minister announced R1-trillion for infrastructure, with a heavy emphasis on “private participation” and “efficiency”. Yet infrastructure is only “growth enhancing” if it reduces the intensity of human deprivation.

The 2026 budget remains obsessed with “manufactured capital” — ports, rail and roads — viewed as extractive pipes to move minerals and containers. The MPI demands that infrastructure be viewed as a tool to build human capital.

If the R11bn ICTSI partnership at the Durban Port does not result in a measurable drop in the MPI of the surrounding wards through our Mesh-Contribution Rating (MCR), then it is merely a bridge built over a hungry community. It is a “licence for leakage” where the profits of the port are siphoned off to Manila or Dubai while the youth in the shadow of the cranes remain “statistically invisible”.

Why the MPI is the ultimate arbiter

The reason the Treasury avoids the MPI is that it is unforgiving. You can manipulate a GDP growth figure by 0.1% through clever accounting tweaks. You can claim a clean audit while doing absolutely nothing for the poor. But you cannot hide the lack of a flushing toilet, the absence of electricity, or the lack of a matric certificate.

The gavel falls

The 2026 budget is a performative intervention because it seeks a social licence based on fiscal process rather than human outcome. The Lehohla Ledger mandates that the MPI be the arbiter. We do not want to hear that the debt is falling until we hear that the “Low-Low” clusters of the South Durban Basin have been dismantled. Anything else is just counting the costs of our decay.

To move from “accounting” to “anthropology”, I propose the following framework to be adopted by the National Treasury and the NEF. This is the numerical conscience required for the renaissance of the republic.

Generational Value Reporting

Treasury must move from the three-year MTEF to a 20-year generational ledger. We must report on the “return on human capital”. If we spend R1bn on schools in the Eastern Cape, the Ledger must track the “numerical truth” of those learners into the labour market.

The renaissance of the republic is not a speech. It is a healed mesh.

The graph above shows the severity of reversal of intensity of poverty in the past 15 years.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa