Who do we thank for the spiralling cost of filling our fuel tanks, and for bringing SA to the brink of begging from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? As a kneejerk response, we blame the state-capture Zuptas, who bled billions from the state. There is merit in that argument.
Pravin Gordhan estimates that state capture cost SA at least R100 billion, while economists quoted in Businesslive say the amount is much more. Anyway, it would have been enough to stave off today’s record jump in fuel prices.
Irregular expenditure by government departments and state-owned entities swallowed another chunk of money that could have been used to uplift the poor, and to help lower fuel prices. According to the auditor-general, irregular expenditure increased to just over R45 billion in the 2016-17 financial year. Try not to be blasé about billions.
Then there’s the R587 billion government wage bill. We spend a third of the entire annual national budget employing more than two million people at national, provincial and local level. Treasury has warned that this is unsustainable. The public service wage bill must be cut, but that ain’t happening.
Nor have we seen any serious indication of President Cyril Ramaphosa carrying out his pledge to trim the bloated Cabinet he inherited from Jacob Zuma. DA leader Mmusi Maimane says that reducing the executive to 15 ministries would save R4.7 billion a year.
Given today’s big blow against motorists and the poor – who will be paying a lot more for transport and food – the Sunday Times lead story about ministers renting luxury apartments for a pittance is pertinent. It shows once again that there is no culture of thrift in the Cabinet. And they couldn’t give a toss about the poor. The Batho Pele (people first) principles crafted for the public service are meaningless in a frenzy of “our time to feed”.
So yes, blame Zuma and his Saxonwold captors. They are indeed culpable but it would be wrong to let the rest of the ANC leadership off the hook. We are led by greedy economic illiterates who continue to spend and waste without care. And they remain committed to disastrous policies such as expropriation without compensation. Theft.
Of course there’s much more behind the fuel price debacle. A third of the price we pay at the pump is for levies which have nothing directly to do with motoring.
The money goes into a general kitty for the above-listed plunder and waste.
Oil price fluctuations and currency dips (linked to SA’s unfavourability as an investment destination) cannot be ignored. But for SA this is not about Iranian or Venezuelan exports, or Donald Trump’s effects on the US dollar. We’d be better placed to weather these storms if the ANC ran a tighter ship. We pay higher levies than in neighbouring countries, making our fuel more expensive, but the money collected in this way is not prudently handled.
ANC mismanagement has fuelled this crisis, where even the ANC-dominated National Planning Commission foresees the possibility of a cap-in-hand plea to the IMF, a Bretton Woods creation despised by the left.
Martin Williams, DA councillor.
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