Sir
This is not a good budget for KZN for the same reason that none of the budgets presented this year are good budgets.
They are all poisoned by being drawn from the same well – a well of equitable share and conditional grants cuts, of a 1% VAT increase and unfunded mandates imposed on a province which has proved incapable of fighting for the interests of its own residents.
All of these are factors which collectively make up what is politely called ‘fiscal consolidation’. They refer to the fact that KZN as a province is at the end of a whole sequence of bad governmental decisions by the Zuma administration – bailing out unsustainable State Owned Entities such as Eskom and SAA, committing non-existent resources to fund Higher Education after decades of underfunding, under-collecting R50 billion by SARS-ravaged bad appointments, and allowing criminals to loot billions to stash away in Dubai.
This is the context in which all the votes in the 2018/19 budget have to present a ‘brave face’ which fools no one. We and the people of KZN know that their interests, their schools, their hospitals and their municipalities have been sacrificed to cover up for the fact that accountability is not part of the ANC vocabulary.
This is also not a good budget because the Legislature has had to accept a cut of R2.856 million, imposed by provincial Treasury, which will come into effect in the 18/19 Adjustment Budget.
Mark Steele, MPL DA, KZN Legislature
