Pro-poor advocacy groups have called on finance minister Enoch Godongwana to put human rights first to protect vulnerable South Africans from the harsh economic climate when he tables his medium-term budget policy statement (mini-budget) in parliament on Wednesday.
NGOs such as the Budget Justice Coalition, Rural Health Advocacy Project, Section 27, Black Sash and Equal Education raised concerns at a pre-budget webinar on Tuesday about ongoing austerity measures in the country’s public education and health systems, saying they undermine people’s rights and deepen inequality.
Godongwana’s budget, they argued, must “reflect a significant recovery strategy for human rights”, adding if such disinvestment continues it will hurt the poor the most.
“We have to give priority to the worst off. And in doing so, we have to also be able to give some things up. We need increased social solidarity,” said Russell Rensburg, director of the Rural Health Advocacy Project.
He said the country, including the middle class, needs to do more “to ensure that somehow there can be a pathway out of poverty”.
“I think now more than ever, we need to move beyond just technocratic analysis of what the budget is … what it should be, and start having a conversation about what gets prioritised in the budget back to the level where it should be. If we don't organise around this idea of a better life for all, as espoused in the preamble of our constitution, we might be on a slippery slope.”
While expenditure on health grew over the years, especially during the pandemic, Rensburg said most of it went into higher-level care, mainly at large hospitals in urban areas. During the pandemic, funds went towards procuring vaccines.
He said primary healthcare, which deals with a huge health burden, including SA's leading killer, tuberculosis, was not prioritised and received only a third of the total health budget.
“This is not to say hospitals mustn't get funding. I think what we need now is a more vigorous conversation around how we allocate funding and what happens in our hospitals ... where is the wastage? This budget comes at a time when we need to reflect on our values. We need to start thinking and taking back our agency and realising that politics is shaped by public discourse ... it is shaped by participation.
“We almost need to go back to that idea put forward by revolutionaries in the 60s about the need to agitate and make the system aware that the government serves the interests of the people. And with the constitution as the primary and the most important piece of legislation, it should be guiding every single decision.”
Section 27 budget analyst Daniel McLaren expressed concern over budget cuts imposed on the public sector, particularly education. He said the past decade was characterised by budget cuts that disadvantaged pupils attending public schools.
“Pretty much every year for the past 10, the amount of money that we're spending on public schooling per pupil has gone down. In particular, the cuts have been around the wage bill, which has been a focus of government, and we're seeing this now on the ground.
“We have been seeing this for the past few years in increasing class sizes, well above the intended average. And we're seeing impacts on quality and the provision of basic education as a result.”
McLaren said this trend is particularly concerning as education is a driver of the economy.
“We need more skills. We need people who can attend university and succeed. But it's also essential for our democracy that we have a functional public education system, and it's essential for reducing inequality. We've seen the rise in private education as we've seen the cuts to public education, and that's not good for inequality because only people who can buy out of the public school system go to private schools.”
McLaren urged Godongwana to come up with workable solutions to address the country’s energy crisis.
He said no new board or turnaround plan would solve Eskom’s problems as long as its multibillion-rand debt remains.
If the finance minister did not come up with a clear debt management plan to address this , “there's really not much hope in terms of ending load-shedding and putting our economy on a sustainable energy footing”.
“If we're unable to invest in our infrastructure and undertake the repairs and maintenance work that we need to do and move towards sustainable solutions, then we're going to continue to have load-shedding, and that's going to hold back the economy and therefore revenue and pretty much everything we're trying to do,” McLaren said.
Equal Education researcher Jane Borman called on the minister to address deep inequalities in SA schools that still reflect apartheid’s racial divide.
While the constitution guaranteed basic education for everyone - and such a right is immediate and meant to provide access to good and safe infrastructure, a conducive learning environment, enough textbooks and sanitation - many schools in SA did not have resources and were underfunded.
“It’s quite clear that 30 years after democracy we haven’t immediately realised this right in any real capacity … there’s been no improvement”.
She said the pandemic exposed government failures on education, with many schools not able to re-open on time due to resource constraints and not being able to adhere to physical distancing requirements.
“Covid-19 was a stark reminder of what it means for some schools to have infrastructure and others not.
“We are concerned that basic education during this time was subjected to budget cuts. We are quite concerned that basic education seems to be getting a smaller share of overall government spending. We are not seeing that as reflective of the reality of how deep the needs are in the basic education sector.”
