The GNU budget debacle will go down in history, arguably alongside the JZ stretching of the criminal justice system, as a watershed moment that demonstrates to what lengths the South African constitutional order can go to make its democratic character a reality.
The coalition arrangements of the ANC and the DA, after no party received an absolute mandate to govern, are the single most significant test of the resolve to put the nation's interests above those of political parties.
The brute truth is that the prize of politics is government, which is the state's most active and primary agent responsible for allocating public goods and services. Those who get to control the government will have the authority to reconcile the conflicting interests of society through instruments such as the budget, a core component of the fiscal framework. It is a moment of government of, by and for the people — whichever way they are represented.
In South Africa, freely elected public representatives carry the will of the people and the legitimacy to govern by default. Unless a party polls more than 50% of the vote, power to govern will be shared. The will of the people is spread across political parties. This is where coalition governments become necessary. The essence of entering into coalitions is about bringing together the spread will of the people to influence the allocative power of state organs — the National Treasury is the apex institution that will attract the interests of coalition members as the currency of political influence.
The budget, as projected by the government of the day, in this case the GNU, outlines the expected income (revenue) and planned spending (expenditure) for a specific period. It is, by definition, the most political of state power instruments, as it defines the future through present-day allocations. Where you spend money is where government visibility is. Tampering with its multi-year cadence will always signal the arrival of new players in the power architecture. It would be foolhardy for any political party that is part of a coalition arrangement and wields the power and influence within such a coalition not to demand the right to be involved in determining the granularity of the budget.
The income and expenditure relationship in a government's budget directly affects economic growth indicators, such as projected GDP growth, associated inflationary pressures, and investment or consumption spending patterns that can spur further growth. The budget affects the lives of all South Africans by determining how national revenue is spent. In a context where political power is a shared reality, the budget details will always be assumed to reflect the interests of those the nation considers the government of the day.
South Africa has been a one-party multiparty democracy over the past 76 years, the National Party accounts for 46 years and the ANC for 30. During this period, citizens had, in essence, lost the ability to question the basis of previous budgets at the level at which the DA in the GNU is now interrogating, albeit for several other causes.
There is, therefore, no precedent to judge the correctness or otherwise of what the DA, as a member of the GNU, is doing to oppose aspects of the budget. Questioning the basis of budgeting in a state might be an outstanding matter in transferring political power to the people. It might be a feature of the democratic order under which society saw no need to exercise it in the past 30 years.
The GNU coalition arrangements, a facility provided for in the constitutional order, strengthen the accountability ecosystem beyond the traditional 'what happened with the budget' to 'why should we follow an approach of budgeting'. We have been a post-facto society on this matter. The concept of freely elected public representatives imposes an obligation to view public policy from the vantage point of how it affects society's bread-and-butter issues. The assumptions of the past 30 years, some of which might have been a function of the majority rule honeymoon, are under pressure for radical review and to start supporting the true nature of South Africa's democracy.
This budget chaos or tussle must never be allowed to go to waste. It opens up opportunities for civil society to institutionalise the democratisation of the budgeting process.
Holding no brief for the DA's questioning of the budget, the questioning of the taxation powers of the National Treasury about the role of public representatives in decision-making is a democracy-enhancing act that debunks the authoritarian paradigm of public policy approaches we saw in the past seven decades. With prospects of no political party securing over 40% of the national vote in 2029, the democratic checks and balances that stem from the DA's questioning of the budget process may be a first step towards a people's budget, grounded in the technical expertise of the public representatives we send to parliament.
The time for democrats and revolutionaries to engage with post-Apartheid state power, from a player's perspective rather than a referee, may be arriving through a medium least expected: the 30-year-old opposition leader, with over 60 years’ experience in the opposition party. It cannot be correct that those on the 'so-called' left of the DA do not see the advantage that came with the truncation of the two-percentage point VAT increase, and we are now at one-percentage point, assuming the DA does not win its urgent Constitutional Court case. True democracy includes differing with the decisions of a coalition government you are part of, if it follows policy paths that prejudice the constituency that sent you to parliament.
The legislation associated with the budgeting process will henceforth become part of the national discourse. The Division of National Revenue Act formula, the taxation determination legislative frameworks, the various appropriation legislations in the national and provincial spheres of government, and many other appropriations that were ordinarily not in the public's purview must also enter the new vortex of analysis and questioning. The past 76 years must be understood as a template that worked when one party had absolute government power. The current context cannot be expected to force-fit into what it is not.
If any advantage has accrued to society from the GNU arrangements, the emphasis on power dynamics within the budgeting process is one of them. The focal point for lobbying on taxation and state expenditure matters can no longer be the National Treasury alone. It is a comprehensive government affair. This should enable effective and practical state-wide planning. The Church Square Consensus of the national budget is facing one of its most significant challenges since 1994. The budget has been the template with which the promise of liberation in the constitution may have been suppressed.
We must acknowledge that our transformation paradigm has created, in many democrats, an unquestioning culture within the liberation movement that may have contributed to the state's chronic dysfunction. Oligarchs or kleptocrats may be building — and to a frightening extent, have already built — a new social order managed through intraparty dysfunctions, over which the public has little to no control.
Acts that expand the freedoms gained through politics must be embraced. It is essential to recognise that tyrannies are anything but natural and ultimately fail those whose interests they were never intended to serve. Democratic centralism as a policy-making tendency and majority rule can be tyrannical — and should be truncated. This budget chaos or tussle must never be allowed to go to waste. It opens up opportunities for civil society to institutionalise the democratisation of the budgeting process.
Dr FM Lucky Mathebula is from the Thinc Foundation, a Tshwane-based think-tank. He is the Head of Faculty for Management of People at The Da Vinci Institute and a Research Associate with TUT.
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