Godongwana’s budget speech marred by a balloon of debt

There is a horrifying graph – compiled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – which sums up South Africa’s dire financial state.

In essence, it shows that real income stagnated between 2014 and about 2017, after which it started to drop dramatically. Even more worryingly, the predictions are that, by 2025, just three years from now, our real gross domestic product (GDP) will have fallen below that of the average of the bottom 25% of countries in the world.

That compares with our position in the mid-2000s, when we were above the global median in terms of real GDP. To expect Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to reverse that awful state of affairs in Wednesday’s budget is like expecting a squadron of pigs do to aerobatics over the burned-out shell of parliament.

The chickens of the decade of state capture have well and truly come home to roost. And most of them are emaciated.

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While estimates are that more than R1.5 trillion was spirited away by looters in the years of state capture, the sad reality is that, even though the Guptas may have fled our country and Jacob Zuma may be sitting like a wounded lion in Nkandla, the looters are still at it, stealing money hand over fist from the public purse.

The ANC’s jobs-as-rewards policy, coupled with its “we are the people who give you grants, remember that at the ballot box” approach, means the state has been living way beyond its means. Our budget deficit and consequent borrowings have seen our national debt balloon out of control.

And yet, Godongwana will probably again try to squeeze the taxpayer golden goose even harder – if not through direct tax increases, then through sly ones like those on smoking and booze and petrol price levies.

This afternoon’s budget is not going to be pretty.