Budget fiasco made SA look like amateurs

Cast your mind back to former finance minister Trevor Manuel on any Budget Day throughout the 2000s.

The smiling minister would walk to a midmorning press conference accompanied by his deputy, Jabu Moleketi, SA Revenue Service (Sars) commissioner Pravin Gordhan, the National Treasury director-general and a few of his top officials.

After the press conference the team would walk to the National Assembly chamber with the minister to present his budget. 

When Gordhan succeeded Manuel as finance chief, he also always walked with his deputies, Nhlanhla Nene or Mcebisi Jonas, alongside him.

The late Tito Mboweni had his deputy, Mondli Gungubele and later David Masondo, alongside him as he jovially arrived to present his budgets, no matter how painful they were.

Alongside the two men were the tax commissioner, the director-general of the National Treasury and other key officials. 

All these displays were not just for the cameras. They had a very serious purpose.

They were a signal to the world that the key levers of economic, fiscal and monetary policy were in sync.

They sent a very clear message to business, consumers, analysts, investors and anyone else who would listen that SA’s economic and fiscal fortunes were in the hands of serious people with a serious job on their hands — and they took their tasks very seriously. 

Unlike other spheres of our government, the National Treasury and entities such as the Reserve Bank and Sars are taken extremely seriously across the globe.

Go to Nairobi, Washington DC, London and ask at ratings agencies or institutions like the World Bank. You will be told how credible our budget process and our institutions are. 

Mboweni, for example, was someone very aware of this and he was extremely keen to preserve this reputation.

In the halls he occupied, he would have been appalled if his speech started late, if one of his deputies was absent, or if he arrived late for the responsibilities he had to carry out. The simple things that send out a powerful message. 

The reason I refer to these traditions and institutions is because they have been key to projecting SA, despite our problems, as a serious country led by serious people.

There has always been a sense that even when other departments were a disaster, at least the National Treasury was a world-class institution run by credible politicians and officials.

It was not like our municipalities, state-owned enterprises or many government departments, where traditions and standards of excellence have long collapsed. 

Until last week. I have watched and listened with absolute dismay as commentators and businesspeople have tried to underplay the extent of the damage done to SA last week by the lack of leadership shown by our government in failing to manage the budget process properly.

People, this was a disaster. It undermines the credibility of the National Treasury, of the finance minister and of the country. It makes SA look amateurish, buffoonish and unserious. 

Let me start with the optics. Now, one of finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s deputies in this government of national unity is Ashor Sarupen of the DA.

Let’s assume that Sarupen knew nothing whatsoever until cabinet discussed a potential VAT increase at its meeting on February 5.

On that date Sarupen’s leader, John Steenhuisen, would surely have called him and asked him what is going on with the budget preparations.

If he did not know then he would have spoken to Godongwana. It would have been in Godongwana’s interest to brief him and ensure that the DA was on board with a VAT increase. Why wasn’t he fully briefed?

That doesn’t seem to have happened at all. That the VAT increase was only discussed in cabinet on Budget Day tells you everything you need to know about the lack of co-ordination and trust in this administration.

Basically, the two main partners in the coalition did not discuss the content of the most important date in SA’s financial calendar beforehand.

How can the ANC and the DA not have negotiated the look of this budget before Wednesday? It means they do not have a joint economic plan. 

It gets worse. At the hastily arranged press conference after the announcement of the budget postponement, Godongwana was caught slamming Sars commissioner Edward Kieswetter on a live TV microphone.

Referring to Kieswetter’s reported stance against a VAT hike, Godongwana said the tax commissioner was “making me angry, even here he comes up with this rubbish”.

Worse still, minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni is heard asking Godongwana: “By the way, when is he [Kieswetter] leaving?” 

Can such a hopelessly divided team really put together a credible budget? 

This government had one job: deliver a credible budget on Wednesday February 19 at 2pm.

They botched it and have deeply damaged the credibility of one of the last few processes and institutions that investors and South Africans can still trust.