In capitalist South Africa the budget is a battleground of class interests. On May 21 Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana will table a revised 2025 budget – the third attempt after two earlier versions were derailed by coalition infighting and court rulings over a proposed VAT hike. With the VAT increase now scuttled, Treasury faces a R75 billion hole. To plug the gap, Godongwana plans roughly R60 billion in cuts, targeting critical departments and projects. In plain terms, clinics will wait and roads will crumble – the poor will suffer. This is no technocratic exercise: it forces a stark choice between bankers’ debt and workers’ needs, exposing the political economy’s contradictions. The working class cannot afford this merciless austerity.
Social Cuts: Who Pays?
Marxists know it is always the poor who pay first. Already-overstretched departments – health, education, police – now face the axe. Even the business lobby admits South Africa “cannot afford to cut the education, health and police budgets any further”, yet Treasury has chosen that route. Clinics will go without medicines, while roads and bridges serving poor communities will decay. One insider bluntly warned that without the VAT hike “you will have to wait longer for your clinic… for us to fix this road, or you will have to wait for a train”. In the townships and villages this sting is acute: rural municipalities – where most households are indigent – “receive far less than what is required to deliver basic services”. In sum, cuts to the social wage will deepen existing inequalities, leaving the poorest with even less water, shelter and schooling.
Capitalist logic is on display: financiers demand balanced books, workers demand bread. Godongwana himself frames it as debt management, assuring investors that “debt stabilisation” is a “crucial element” of public finance. But in practice this means austerity for ordinary people. Even government-aligned sources admit this: one insider said the cuts will have “an even worse effect on poor people than a VAT increase would have had”. Reuters warns that without a budget; spending could be throttled on “frontline services” and even bailouts for ailing state firms like Eskom. In Marx’s language, the class interests are clear: the poor live with the cuts so capitalists can get paid. BLSA’s suggestion – trim government size, not nurses and teachers – only shows that even business circles fear the social blowback. The Budget now openly forces workers to finance capitalist stability, an age-old contradiction of this political economy.
Legal Chaos in Parliament
Amid this economic onslaught, even legality has been tossed aside. The Western Cape High Court flatly struck down the 2025 Fiscal Framework, finding it was adopted in breach of basic procedures. EFF organizers, led by Sinawo Tambo, note that Parliament’s Money Bills Amendment rules were flagrantly ignored. The finance committee never held the required vote or debates: Section 8(5) of the Money Bills Act was bypassed, and the framework was simply grafted onto a report after the fact, “making the entire process illegal”. In effect, a full reset of the fiscal plan is needed or else Parliament risks being nothing more than a rubber stamp. The EFF warns that failing to correct these violations would precipitate a constitutional crisis, insisting that public funds be managed “lawfully, transparently, and in the best interests of the people”. This budget-battle is as much about democratic rights as it is about economic rights.
At the EFF’s recent ‘VAT Victory’ march, Julius Malema hammered home this class divide. He denounced the budget as “another lie” and vowed to vote against any plan that cuts education, health or infrastructure. In his fiery rhetoric, every rand cut is cast as an attack on the working class – echoed in slogans like “the rich must be taxed more, not the poor”. Malema even demands sweeping systemic reforms: for example, he calls for the Reserve Bank to be taken from private shareholders so that it “truly belongs to South Africa”, a step he says is vital for national economic sovereignty. In Lenin’s spirit the EFF frames this as a political choice: politicians should decide investment priorities, not technocrats who cater to capital. The EFF’s marching messages – “Free Education Now”, “Cancel Student Debt” and “National Reserve Bank” – lay bare a radical programme for redistribution, a direct challenge to the current budget’s priorities.
Concretely, the EFF offers an alternative budget built around the working class. Its parliamentary submission reallocates R88.4 billion more to local government – shifting funds from the bloated national and provincial overheads. It points to Auditor-General figures showing over R190 billion lost to fraud and waste in three years, insisting that this loot be reclaimed for clean water, sanitation, and schools. Rejecting the neoliberal fantasy, the EFF affirms that basic services are public goods, not commodities. It calls for progressive taxes on wealth and profits, not on bread and milk – for example scrapping student fees so young people graduate debt-free. In a tone recalling Nkrumah’s anti-colonial critique, the EFF argues this budget must serve the people, not the bondholders or multinational owners of power, mines and banks.
Conclusion: A Class-Struggle Budget
In sum, Budget 3.0 is a recipe for class warfare, not recovery. It takes from workers and gives to banks – a truth Marx and Lenin underlined when they described bourgeois governments as “committees for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie.” Here the contradictions of capitalism are laid bare: the rural poor and working class hear there is no money for bread, while trillions flow out to service debt and preserve profit. Marxism demands exactly the opposite of this austerity: a budget that redistributes wealth, not one that reinforces the masters’ dominance. The EFF’s fiery rhetoric captures the popular outrage at these cuts, but true liberation requires going beyond protest. The working class must seize this moment – turning the budget debate into a platform for socialist transformation, from nationalizing banks to planning industry, so that human need finally trumps private profit. The workers have nothing to lose but their chains; in Marx’s words, the oppressed must overthrow the system that demands their misery. On May 21 we will see if this budget cements oppression or if the masses turn deficit into revolt.
Sources: Recent budget reporting and statements (Central News, TimesLive, Reuters) and public EFF communications, analyzed through a Marxist lens.
The article is correct to frame this moment as one of heightened class struggle. Whether the masses will transform this outrage into organized resistance is the critical question. But the conclusion is sound: budgets must serve people, not profit. In a time of deepening inequality and climate crisis, radical rethinking of state priorities is an urgent task. Technocratic stability cannot come at the cost of deepening human misery and if the political class continues to govern for capital, they should expect a reckoning from below. As the article says, the working class has nothing to lose but their chains—and the time to organize is now.
ReplyDelete