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A 2% VAT increase for South Africa, a disaster.
A 2% VAT increase in South Africa will hurt the poor, the middle income and business.
Minister Enoch Godwana’s, Minister of Finance; budget speech had to be halted, for the first time in its history because the members of the other parties in GNU (government of national unity) were rightly opposed to a 2% increase in Vat.This 2% Vat increase is going to hit the unemployed, the poor and middle class and the unemployed because they all pay Vat on essential items to survive. The rich can afford it. This increase is going to force many small businesses to retrench staff, downscale or shut down because they wouldn’t be able to withstand the huge burden of increase.
The head of South African revenue service, Mr Kieswater, and several other opposition parties are opposed to this increase for several; legitimate reasons, besides hurting the poor, which neither the ANC government nor COSATU cares much about.
The ANC was being devious by saying that the Vat increase was necessary to pay the increase in salaries for government workers. By doing so, they were surreptitiously trying to garner the support of the government workers by forcing them to keep quiet about Vat increase.
The amount that is expected from a 2% Vat increase is a mere 25 billion rand. Our debt on the interest alone is one billion rand a day, so a 2% vat increase is not going to get us out of our crippling debt.
We spend 16% of our GDP on government ministers and their staff’s salaries.
Why do these people, who earn north of one million rand annually, need two houses for free, free municipal services, private German luxury cars, chauffeurs, blue lights, body guards and free air travel with accomodation.
Why can’t they pay for everything like all other citizens, out of their huge salaries? Why do they need to live in special mansions?
Countries similar to our economy spend a mere 6% on government salaries.
The government owned about 700 SOES or State owned enterprises.
Some of the major ones are/were SAA, TELKOM/ESKOM/Railways and harbours. These are all destroyed or in the precipice of bankruptcy.
They have all been run to the ground and are bankrupt. We no longer have a proper railway network; we have reached stage six load shedding. We have enough coal to power our electricity grids for several hundred years. Trump is ignoring climate change as a hoax. Green energy is going to benefit rich cartels. Why can’t we use the coal we have if the US is going to do it. So far the arctic hasn’t melted for the last sixty that it was predicted to do.
Our municipalities are bankrupt. Besides the wasteful expenditure on our government officials, our state departments seem to be bedeviled with corruption through the skewed tender processes. Families of ministers get the tenders and bill the state at a huge profit.
Why do we need deputy ministers instead of highly qualified officials without any perks?
Ibrahim Traoré’ of Burkina Faso has done it in his country. He cut salaries for himself and his ministers, processes the gold that is mined in his country and has paid $20 billion in debt repayment to the neocolonialists to take his country out of poverty. He is well on the road to make his country totally independent to the disappointment of France.
He is determined to break the shackles of bondage to the neo colonialists, the IMF and world bank, and he is succeeding.
If we cut government spending in South Africa and let private entrepreneurs take over the failed state owned businesses, we could save R700 billion annually and start paying off our R4 trillion dollars in debt, owed to the notorious world bank and IMF, which are determined to keep Africa enslaved through poverty and corruption.
Our government, including many of the municipalities are least supportive of the middle and poor class, who wish to run their own businesses. We need a revival of a strong middle class, not only here, but in many democratic countries in the world to get our countries out of impending poverty.
We have far too many big corporate companies and oligopolies owning the world. This rich fedual class must be resigned in. We need a government that cares for its citizens.
Our poorly thought out COVID policies were a poison for our fledgling economy. We should never have listened to the WHO.
We have become a bankrupt state.
The power that ELON Musk wields over Trump is going to ensure that we are kept out in the cold. The white farmers, who ran to Musk to seek his help, are going to be hit hardest. They shot themselves in the foot and inadvertently damaged our economy and our image. I love South Africa and its people like a true patriot.
I don’t see us coming out of this mess with the current stock of politicians. We have politicians, who have the gift of the gab but have absolutely no leadership skills nor do they have the interests of their electorate at heart. We have become a failed country, even though we are so rich in resources.
Our major cities have become the turf of huge crime syndicates, who go about their business fearlessly, with no regard for the law.
The turmoil in the rest of Africa has made South Africa their home through our vast unprotected and porous borders.
Approximately 1 million Zimbabweans have found their way into South Africa to avoid the tyranny of leaders like the late despotic Mugabe.
If this trend goes on unabated, no one is going to invest in our country. Unemployment is going to shoot up exponentially, crime is going to be the main source of survival and our beautiful wealthy country will become another basket case for the mean Trump to refer to our country as a “Shit hole” country.
Already we have an unemployment rate of about 50%, 1000 newly graduated doctors are unemployed and our six medical institutions keep taking on new graduates to add to the unemployment pool with money that we don’t have.
In all likelihood, if we don’t find a solution, some of the provinces might seriously have to consider ceding from the country because in 30 years of ANC rule, we are rapidly heading towards becoming a failed state and there is absolutely no hope for the previously disadvantaged minority groups.
The ANC, with its cadre appointment policies, where top government positions are reserved for their useless members, has long reached its sell by date. Like all freedom parties from the colonial era, they need to be replaced urgently to save the country.
We do not have a single leader in this country that has the moral fibre of Ibrahim Traoré’ to take on the reigns of power to make South Africa a well respected and self sufficient country.
Our president has his fingers in too many pies, owns several businesses and seems to be in competition with his billionaire brother in law. He has enough wealth, so why does he need more? He seems to have an insatiable appetite/greed for money and properties.
South Africa needs a leader that is willing to serve the nation, not someone trying to enrich his family and his/her party and is attracted by the lure of corruption.
I am deeply saddened, after getting deeply involved in the fight for a democratic, alongside many fellow South Africas back in the sixties right into the nineties, that the ANC whom we all trusted to make us a successful country has, in a short span of 30 years, turned us into a failed state.
EV RAPITI
Cape Town
February 24, 2025
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