Political analyst Angelo Fick says it’s disingenuous of political parties to make it seem that their negotiations around the budget and VAT increase are aimed at benefitting South Africans.
The ANC has been holding talks with its partners in the government of national unity to discuss the budget impasse.
Finance Minister Enoch Gondongwana said in the 2025 budget that he delivered in Parliament last month that there would be two increases of 0.5 percentage points, one on the first of next month and the same increase on April 12026.
Fick says the situation is confusing, “The problem here is that these politicians want to appear to the South African voting public and their own supporters ahead of next year’s elections as if they are holding the country’s interest as the centre of why it is they are acting the way that they do. But at the same time they are engaged in very complex intra-party and inter-party negotiations that have to do with power-sharing arrangements. Mr Mashaba has neglected to hold in his conversation the fact that he is in a power-sharing arrangement with the African National Congress in the City of Tshwane.”
VIDEO | ANC meets parties to solve VAT impasse:
Meanwhile, Godongwana is expected to announce the decision on the increase in Value-Added Tax this coming week, according to Action SA leader Herman Mashaba.
The party proposed the scrapping of the VAT increase, which led to Parliament passing this year’s budget with a slim majority.
194 MPs voted in favour and 182 against.
Mashaba says Action SA and the ANC have been engaging National Treasury on his party’s proposal for alternative sources of revenue collection.
“An official announcement will be made sometime in the middle of this week. So we’ll see how far the Minister and his team have worked on the proposal submitted by ActionSA to the finance committee and Parliament. Our proposal was that let us approve the budget as it is right now but come out with the recommendation to request the Minister of Finance to look at other alternatives, and we as Action SA offered to present alternative revenue streams, and we presented to them over R110 billion worth of alternatives that they can use instead of taxing South Africans.”
