For the average taxpaying citizen, the budget Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan will present to parliament on Wednesday, is less about the rise in commodity prices, than any bump in the price of beer; more about living under a roof that doesn’t leak than any dry projections about more funds for public housing.
This is not to take anything away from the sterling job the ministry has done in the past in trying to narrow the historic gaps left hanging over the abyss between the haves and the have-nots.
These remain huge in areas of health, education, and the providing of public infrastructure and service delivery.
Despite trying to balance the books as best they can, successive ministers have done an admirable job in attempting to spread palpably inadequate funding as equitably as possible to try and redress the problems of the past.
It would be well for all of us to accept that getting it right some of the time and scraping by with what we have is ultimately better than getting it wrong most of the time.
The budget is a rational glance into the realm of the finite and an often irrational stab at the future. Take the price of a pint for example…
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