LETTERS | Simple budget maths: cut spending

Re “Unlocking growth essential for fiscal sustainability” by Duncan Pieterse (Sunday Times, March 16). It is impossible not to be struck by the lack of thinking in the budgeting process. And of course, not understanding percentages.

The proposal was to raise VAT by two percentage points (in other words, the VAT rate of 15% would be increased 13.33%) to raise R60bn. Seeing the total budget is around R2.6-trillion, this R60bn represents 2.3% of the total. Then, we can’t afford to employ 800 doctors, because this would cost R10bn, which (horrors!) is 0.38% of the total over three years. And early childhood development would cost the same again. I think it was Lee Iacocca of Chrysler fame who said “there isn’t a budget ever made where you can’t trim 5%”. What is wrong with these people?

Of course, the problem didn’t start yesterday, and giving above-inflation increases to semi-productive people year after year is heaping up trouble. Sticking to inflation-related increases would send a very strong signal, not only to the employees but also to the world, that we are serious.

Pieterse mentions Operation Vulindlela, initiated to fast-track development. Apparently, the ANC does not understand “fast” (and yes, this budget was prepared under the GNU, but apparently the ANC brigade didn’t use anyone else’s input). Eskom is still a long way from being fixed, and we are lied to about its operational state. It is nowhere near its electricity availability factor target, which should be a minimum of 75%. And its rates are ridiculous due to excessive costs (paying too much for everything; overstaffed).

That Transnet is still in the state it is, is incomprehensible. The Durban container terminal privatisation is mired in a legal morass because the state-owned entity (SOE) didn’t take legal advice. The CEO claims Transnet can sort out Cape Town on its own, and that may be true, but it’s taking place at snail’s pace. And getting stuff to Durban is still woefully behind target, ditto Richards Bay. Vulindlela?

And water, and other SOEs, but most of all, education, which has probably suffered the most.

Go back to your calculators, then get in people who understand “fast” and “capable” and give them free rein. You will see how fast the income side escalates, to provide enough money to make this country great again.

— Eric Carter, via e-mail

A diplomatic disaster foretold 

Government officials say [Ebrahim] Rasool’s expulsion from the US is justified after his attack on [President Donald] Trump and that Rasool scored an own goal.

For me, the own goal was scored by the department of international relations & co-operation and the ANC government in deploying an outspoken pro-Palestine advocate in January this year knowing full well the support the Trump administration has for Israel. 

The ANC government is unable to think further than its selfish nose, to the detriment of us ordinary South Africans.

— Gordon Upton, Nelson Mandela Bay

Ntuli 0, Gumede 1

Mdumiseni Ntuli’s attack on William Gumede (“The enemies of transformation drive a well-oiled, modern machine”, Sunday Times March 16) is laughable. To start with, Gumede does not need the ANC for a living, while most of the useless ministers in the ANC would be jobless if the ANC were not in power.

No liberation movement has been able to govern properly once it came to power, so please, Mr Ntuli, like President Cyril Ramaphosa who did not know that Johannesburg was in such a mess, you must stop trying to fool the people. South Africans of all races are starting to see what the ANC is all about: enriching a selected few and offering the poor only empty talk.

I am sure you also supported [Jacob] Zuma wholeheartedly, but of course you need a job. Please, Prof Gumede, keep telling us the truth as you see it, more people will wake up and make South Africa what Nelson Mandela envisaged. 

— Paulo Almeida, Craighall Park

Ntuli 0, Gumede 2

Mdumiseni Ntuli, chief whip of the ANC, wrote forcefully (Sunday Times, March 16) concerning the ANC’s justification for affirmative action as a policy of “redress” rather than a manifestation of reverse racism.

Most reasonable citizens would agree that post-1994, some form of employment redress was indeed justified — for a while. His obvious problem however is his deliberate omission to mention any time frame applicable to such a policy.

Consider this: young man W(hite) and young man B(lack), both able and competent, apply for a certain job in 1995. B is duly appointed on the grounds of redress — fair enough in 1995. More than a generation later, their children, who are now in their late 20s, both apply for a certain job in 2025. Does Ntuli’s ANC still contend that it is equitable and essential that B’s son should be in a “designated group” and be accorded preference? Other postcolonial nations have become economic powerhouses within 30 years, while we limp along crying “redress, redress”. 

— L Steinhardt, Port Alfred

Ntuli 0, Gumede 3

Ntuli’s vicious onslaught on Gumede is unwarranted.

South Africa’s history has been a blood-soaked one, from the early frontier wars to the two Anglo-Boer wars, to apartheid’s brutal past. None of this can be changed, but what intellectuals like Gumede advocate is a non-ideological, pragmatic politics for the good of all South Africans. As Sol Plaatje once wrote in a Mahikeng newspaper: “The white race can no more do without the black, and the black without the white, than the right hand can do without the left.”

One cannot dismantle the legacy of the Natives Land Act of 1913 or apartheid by inflammatory rhetoric like “72% of South Africa’s farmland remains in white hands”, or “black households earn six times less than white ones”, and so forth. It sounds like a stuck record. I could point out black South Africans who own Ferraris and frequent the nightclubs of Sandton where I live.

We need a new narrative. Naming the Expropriation Bill as such, constitutes inflammatory language per se. Surely, someone in our government’s legal department has more imagination than that?

It is no fault of the Afrikaners if they occupy 72% of the land today. At least they assure us and our neighbours of our food security. I need not remind Ntuli of Zimbabwe’s effort at decolonising the land and its dire consequences. If the majority of black South Africans have the bent to lead an agrarian lifestyle as the Afrikaners do, which I doubt, then the government must already own enough land to distribute to aspiring black farmers.

— Harry Sewlall, Parkmore

It takes a village — including the men — to raise a child

Jaco van Schalkwyk’s article, “Men don’t have to be dads to be role models” (Sunday Times, March 16), is loaded with brilliant ideas to address the issue of absent fathers. But to say “too many fathers are missing in action” gave me a picture of someone who has willingly “abandoned ship”. That could be the case with some men, but the reality is that missing fathers are victims of circumstances themselves.

This piece rallies us into action without apportioning blame to anyone. It paints a complete picture of the impact of missing fathers in society.

Yes, we know why fathers are absent. The disintegration of the family unit, the high number of men languishing in prisons (97% of the 163,000 prison population were men in 2019), and the staggering number of men who are murdered every year are some of the reasons.

This leaves children vulnerable in child-headed or single-parent-headed homes. The boys, in turn, grow up to become absent fathers.

As a possible solution, Van Schalkwyk reminds us that “fatherhood transcends biological connections”. Who would have thought that one day there would be an army of social fathers to mentor and guide young boys? Bringing up a child was once something the whole community did, but that has been slowly eroded over the years.

It’s time our society took a long, hard look at itself to eradicate fatherlessness once and for all.

— Sipho Sithole, via e-mail

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