Budget 2025 is a budget of betrayal

As deliberations on the recently tabled third budget of 2025 began in the National Assembly this week, we owe ourselves a reflection on the tumultuous process that has got our country to this point.

It is important to note that the 2025 budget marks not just another fiscal year in post-apartheid South Africa – it symbolises a turning point in our history.

It is the first budget under what the EFF has rightly characterised as the reorganisation of the state through a reactionary alliance between the former liberation movement, the ANC, and the racist DA.

This alliance, named a government of national unity (GNU), is not a coalition of national purpose, but a desperate tool of white capitalist power designed to preserve the apartheid economic order and logic.

This is the budget of betrayal. When Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana attempted to table the first budget on 19 February, it came with a two percentage point increase in value-added tax (VAT).

This would have increased VAT from 15 to 17%, with no adjustments to personal income tax brackets for a second year – punishing workers through inflation while rewarding the rich through fiscal conservatism.

That budget collapsed. But instead of returning with a transformative vision, the minister came back with another VAT-increasing, austerity-driven proposal that only softened the blow numerically, but kept the same anti-poor content.

To understand the logic behind these budgets, we must return to the moment of betrayal that defined SA’s democratic transition.

In 1994, the white capitalist establishment and the racist National Party did not trust the ANC to manage the economy.

They demanded that a white minister of finance be appointed – and the ANC foolishly agreed. That minister imposed neoliberalism as a condition.

What followed was a slow but systematic surrender of political power over the economy.

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Key institutions like the National Treasury and the SA Reserve Bank were handed over to technocrats who serve the interests of white capital, not the democratic will of the people.

Thirty-one years later, the consequences are clear. National Treasury operates as a shadow government. It writes budgets that cannot be challenged, shuts down progressive proposals and imposes austerity even in times of mass suffering.

Under the guise of fiscal discipline, it has become the enemy of transformation. This is why, despite ANC conference resolutions calling for a state bank, for wealth redistribution and reorganisation of the economy, nothing changes.

The technocrats have captured the state and parliament. Today, we are told that state-owned enterprises will not be bailed out.

Not because we don’t need their strategic services and infrastructure, but because there is a plan to collapse state capacity and hand over service delivery to the private sector.

From rail to ports, energy to water – the logic is to privatise. What is worse is that this is being done under conditions of crisis, so that society can be blackmailed into accepting market-based solutions.

Cut education and children drop out. Cut health care and clinics close. Cut police budgets, and crime increases.

And then, the private sector arrives – not as a saviour, but as a profiteer. The 2025 budget must be seen as an attack on the poor.

It is an attack on the right to dignity. It is an attack on the very idea of a developmental state. And it is a budget that must not pass.

Comrades, let us be clear: this is not a technical debate. This is a political confrontation. It is a battle between two visions of South Africa.

One vision wants to preserve the economic status quo. It wants a small state, big business and poor people forever waiting.

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The other vision – the EFF’s vision – wants a people-centred budget. We want a developmental state that builds, not breaks.

A state that employs doctors and nurses, not lays them off. A state that invests in infrastructure, not in the profits of credit ratings agencies.

This is why we have taken this fight into parliament and into the courts. Our legal victory against the unlawful VAT increase was not just a procedural win. It was a political victory.

It reminded National Treasury and parliament that they are not above the law. That their decisions must be transparent, democratic and just.

And most importantly, it showed the people that the EFF is not afraid to challenge power.

As we enter these critical weeks of this budget battle, let every progressive South African understand what is at stake.

If this budget passes without resistance, it will become the template for the next decade of austerity. It will destroy what is left of public services. It will force municipalities into collapse.

The EFF is prepared to fight. We are prepared to amend the fiscal framework. We are prepared to reject the Appropriation Bill.

We are prepared to table counterproposals – rooted in wealth taxation, in increased funding for local government, in job creation and in insourcing.

Let us be clear: if they fail to pass a people-centred budget by the deadline of 31 July, we will call for the dissolution of this government and demand fresh elections.

If a government cannot govern, it must step aside.

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