Fight the budget-wrecking viruses of graft and incompetence

Covid-19, debt, deficits and job-shedding are not the only shadows over Wednesday’s supplementary budget speech by Finance Minister Tito Mboweni.

Twin viruses of corruption and incompetence have not yet peaked. Unmasked, they are contagious at all lockdown levels. “Science” shows that despite massive cash injections for the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture and tough talk from the National Prosecuting Authority, not one Zupta has been jailed.

In fact, corruption symptoms are spreading. Water was already contaminated. The department of water and sanitation’s irregular expenditure reached R8.9 billion in 2018-19.

Contagion continues under lockdown. R600 million has been spent on supplying 3,500 schools with water tanks, without following regular tender processes.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the province where corruption previously spiked at Nkandla, huge numbers of 5,000-litre JoJo tanks have been delivered and installed for R28,000 each. I had the same tank delivered and installed on a concrete plinth for less than R5,000, all-inclusive.

Also, in KwaZulu-Natal, personal protective equipment worth millions has “mysteriously reappeared”, after being reported missing.

The Eastern Cape health department spent R94,000 each on 100 motorcycles with sidecars, oxygen tank, stretcher, masks and first-aid kit. Without extras they are advertised on Alibaba.com for about R18,000.

Simply, Covid-19 is being used to make sickening profits by inflating prices.

Covid-19 has opened new ways to plunder. Even the Unemployment Insurance Fund’s Temporary Employment Scheme, crafted to assist businesses, has been looted of millions, according a Sunday Times lead story, “Covid-19 ‘jackpot’ bonanza exposed”.

Covid-19 often occurs with comorbidities such as obesity, hypertension, HIV and TB.

Corruption’s partner is incompetence, to which cadres are particularly susceptible. The ANC’s Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma admitted this week that deployed cadres are responsible for many local government failures.

It doesn’t end there. Corrupt, incompetent cadres have also grounded SAA, bankrupted Eskom, Prasa and the SABC, etc. You name it. They ruin it. Dr Dlamini-Zuma has misdiagnosed the condition. The correct treatment is not swapping “right cadres” for “wrong cadres”.

The country can be cured only when the most competent people are appointed.

Arbitrary lockdown rules and plans are symptoms of incompetence. When a R200 billion loan guarantee scheme which is supposed to help small businesses can only cough up R7 billion, that’s incompetence killing businesses.

Corruption and incompetence sickened our economy before Covid-19. Diagnosis: junk status. Symptoms: high unemployment, rising debt.

The patient was very ill. In February, the budget deficit was forecast at 6.8%, the highest in a generation. Gross government debt was projected to increase to 71.6% of gross domestic product (GDP). Now, Treasury predicts debt will reach 113.8% of GDP by 2028.

Across all the indicators, our economy is sick, needing intubation in intensive care.

There is no way Mboweni can balance the budget without excessive borrowing. Junk-rated South Africa is in no position to dictate the terms of any finance offered.

Drastic treatment is prescribed.

Nonviable state-owned enterprises must be locked-down, isolated and sold off.

The bloated public sector wage bill (which includes politicians’ pay) must be put on a strict diet.

Fire the incompetents, jail the corrupt. That’s how to build immunity against economic collapse.

Martin Williams, DA councillor and former editor of The Citizen.

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