Godongwana’s Third Budget and the War on the Working Class by Staff Writer

In the name of fiscal prudence and debt stabilization, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana delivered his third budget speech on May 21, 2025—a ritual obeisance to global capital that concretizes the ruling class’s war on the working masses. Behind the technocratic jargon of “sustainable debt path,” “revenue shortfalls” and “expenditure reprioritization” lies a naked class project: to preserve surplus value for financiers and monopolies by slashing the social wage, shrinking public sector capacity, and shifting the costs of economic crisis onto labour. From a Marxian standpoint, this budget is a manifesto of austerity-driven capital accumulation, thrust upon an already squeezed proletariat.

1. The Fetish of Debt and the Fetish of the Market

Godongwana began by lamenting an R 75 billion fiscal gap—no mention of the trillions paid out in interest to bondholders since 1994. His solution: cut R 60 billion from “non-core” spending, delay infrastructure projects, and extract more from an economy that has seen real wages stagnate for over a decade. Marx exposed the ideology of bourgeois economics as a “fetish” that mystifies the relations of exploitation: here, “debt stabilisation” conceals the structural decision to privilege finance capital’s yield over working-class livelihoods. The minister’s invocation of the “market’s confidence” is a confession that this budget exists not to meet social needs, but to keep yields low and credit spreads tight—an outright transfer of risk from the bankers to the bus drivers, the teachers, and the nurses.

2. R 60 billion in Cuts: Who Bears the Brunt?

Let us inspect the knife-edge of the R 60 billion cuts. First, health and education face deep freezes: clinics will run short of medicine, school maintenance grants will be trimmed, and teacher hiring plans put on ice. Second, local municipalities—where the majority of the rural poor dwell—lose significant capital allocations, imperiling water, sanitation, and electricity upgrades in townships. Third, transport and infrastructure projects slated for under-served regions are deferred indefinitely, ensuring that the centrifugal forces of spatial apartheid remain intact. In each case, the victims are the working class and the oppressed nationalities, who must now wait longer in overcrowded hospitals, attend crumbling schools, and endure unpaved roads that throttle livelihoods.

Marx’s concept of the “social wage”—the basket of services and amenities reproduced by the state—has been attacked head-on. Godongwana’s budget shrinks this social wage so that capitalists may reap the full fruits of their exploitation without interference. In crisis, the capitalist state reasserts its true function: to manage the common affairs of the bourgeoisie.

3. Tax Proposals: Regressivity by Design

Not one word was spoken of a wealth tax on the billionaire class that sits comfortably in palatial estates and offshore havens. No serious attempt was made to target unearned income, capital gains or immovable property: the minister reaffirmed that any such proposals would “risk capital flight”—the very alibi used to shield the 1% from contribution. Instead, the burden is subtly shifted onto wage-earners via bracket creep in personal income tax, higher levies on fuel, and increased excise duties on everyday goods. This is regressive by design: the rich maintain their fast-car lifestyles and yacht-club memberships while the working class pays more to get to work, feed their families, and keep the lights on.

In Marxian terms, this is a compound extraction of surplus: first through the wage relation, then via taxes on consumption that are ultimately underwritten by labour’s purchasing power. The state thus strengthens the capitalist’s grip on surplus by redirecting mass social reproduction costs back onto the producers themselves.

4. Debt Service as Class Policy

Godongwana proudly declared that debt service will remain the fastest-growing item in the budget—already absorbing nearly 15 cents of every rand spent. This is no neutral phenomenon. Every rand paid in interest to bondholders is a rand denied to clinics, classrooms, and crèches. By locking in high interest payments, the state secures financiers’ profits while condemning public services to stagnation. Marx’s analysis of state finance teaches us that in monopoly capitalism, state budgets become the locus where capital reproduces itself at scale: “the more the state spends on maintaining private capital, the less it invests in social reproduction.” Herein lies the heart of class politics: debt service is state policy, and state policy is class policy.

5. The Illusion of Growth and “Fiscal Space”

To dress up these measures, the minister spoke of “creating fiscal space” and “supporting growth through private investment.” Yet growth under neoliberal capitalism in South Africa has been anaemic, averaging below 2% annually, while unemployment clings stubbornly above 30%. Private capital will only invest when profit rates are high—otherwise it idles in offshore accounts or speculates in financial markets. By starving public investment in infrastructure and skills, the state ensures labour remains poorly equipped, driving down real wages and keeping the proletariat fragmented. This is the self-reinforcing cycle Marx identified: underinvestment in social reproduction leads to a reserve army of labour, which in turn depresses wages and increases capital’s surplus.

6. Contradictions and the Road Ahead

Godongwana’s rhetoric masks contradictions. He claims that austerity now will enable expansion later—but without restoring the social wage or empowering workers, there will be no mass market for the goods produced. He asserts that protecting “creditworthiness” protects the nation—but it is the bondholders who profit, not the people. These contradictions cannot be resolved under capitalism: austerity deepens crisis, crisis requires more austerity, and the vicious spiral continues until the system is either overthrown or collapses under its own weight.

The Marxian imperative is clear: the working class must organize to break this cycle. We cannot rely on the capitalist state to serve our interests. Instead, we must build counter-institutions—workers’ cooperatives, popular health and education forums, militant unions—that defend and expand the social wage. We must demand progressive taxation on capital, expropriation without compensation of idle land for social housing and agrarian reform, and the redirection of interest payments into a national development fund under democratic workers’ control.

Conclusion: A Call to Class Struggle

Enoch Godongwana’s third budget is not a technocratic necessity but a declaration of class war. It transfers the costs of crisis onto the proletariat while protecting the privileges of the bourgeoisie and bondholders. Austerity is the order of the day, and the social wage is under siege. But crisis opens the door to revolution: when people cannot afford to live, they begin to question the system itself. Let us turn this budget defeat into a clarion call for a workers’ revolt, for the abolition of capitalist exploitation, and for the socialization of wealth for the common good. The working class has nothing to lose but its chains—and a world to gain.