TOM EATON

The dramatic events of Tuesday and Wednesday, which saw the budget speech cancelled at the last minute, have once again got South Africans wondering: has anyone in the ANC gone outside the golf estate’s gate in the last 10 years?

Of course, we know why finance minister Enoch Godongwana tried to increase VAT by 13%. Money is tight, and the job market is getting so desperate that some MPs have even started going to committee meetings.

It’s also been reported that the hike would have hit middle- and upper-income earners hardest, which means it was, at least politically, not a terrible move. After all, when rich South Africans get angry they either threaten to stop voting for the DA and then don’t, or they share twice as many Rob Hersov videos on WhatsApp. Either way, it generally doesn’t hurt the ANC.

The speech has been postponed until March 12, enough time for the accountants to thrash out some new numbers, or, failing which, for Ramaphosa to feel around between his couch cushions and see if he can come up with some of the shortfall.

The problem, however, is the not-so-rich, those middle-income earners, who have a nasty, counterrevolutionary habit of spending less and employing fewer people when they’re clinging on to the middle class with their fingernails, watching inflation tick up again, waiting for Eskom to implement a stonking increase, and now have to cough up an extra R58bn in tax.

In other words, while Godongwana’s bomb wasn’t aimed directly at the poor, South Africa’s legion of under- and unemployed people who rely on the middle class would have been devastated by the fallout.

Which is presumably why cabinet ministers from the DA, IFP, FF+ and even the ANC gently took the finance minister aside, described to him the sorts of things that happen beyond the gatehouse of the golf estate, and politely told him where he could stick his extra 2%.

I suppose it didn’t help his cause that he reportedly only revealed the new 17% VAT rate to cabinet two hours before he was supposed to deliver his speech. Given that, to the ANC top brass, being an hour late for everything qualifies one as impressively punctual, two hours’ notice must have felt scandalously rushed, as if Godongwana and Cyril Ramaphosa were trying to sneak the increase into the teleprompter and government gazette just seconds from showtime.

Now, though, the dust seems to be settling. The speech has been postponed until March 12, enough time for the accountants to thrash out some new numbers, or, failing which, for Ramaphosa to feel around between his couch cushions and see if he can come up with some of the shortfall. The DA and its fellow objectors are riding high after their first decisive intervention in the GNU, rightly revelling in having forced the ANC to remember that that it isn’t a ruling party merely tolerating some passengers.

For Godongwana, though, the next few weeks will be anything but affirming. His speech will be one of the most closely — and suspiciously — watched in recent years, and while his number-crunchers will be tearing their hair out as they try to decide how badly to rob Peter to pay Paul, he will know that there’s one question that doesn’t have a neat mathematical answer: how to raise value added tax when his party has added so little value for so long that there’s not much more to tax.