Time for a zero-based SA budget to cut the costs of corruption, politics and wastage

With no Budget and no certainty about how the politics around it will play out, there is a window of uncertainty. While government needs more money to provide vital services, there is clear evidence of wastage in many departments. This is why this could be the right moment to impose a zero-based budget. Unfortunately, politics will prevent this from happening.

It is a common complaint of citizens in many democracies that governments waste money. 

It is partly this sentiment which is driving US President Donald Trump’s agenda at the moment, and was one of the reasons that Ronald Reagan won elections so convincingly with the message that “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem”.

In our case, there is clear evidence of wastage. And corruption.

Very few citizens are getting value for money, whether it is Joburg residents asking what the city is doing with its R83-billion budget, or how the National Department of Health spent R28-million on a roadshow to advertise the NHI (money that could have been spent on posts for doctors and nurses).

Read more: ‘Another slap in the face’ — cash-strapped City of Joburg splurges on bodyguards for bigwigs

Anyone who has spent any time at a driver’s licence centre can attest to the fact that there is virtually no productivity, and yet plenty of cost.

Read more: The hell of pointless bureaucracy: My hostile trip into driving licence renewal purgatory

A former Gauteng Transport MEC David Mamabolo has previously said, getting a licence would require bribery at every stage. 

And yet the people who “work” in these centres still demand above-inflation increases.

The SETAs and a multitude of other government agencies do not appear to provide value for money.

For example, despite a big budget, the National Youth Development Agency does not appear to have made any substantive difference to the problems our young people face.

It is not heresy to say this. At least one senior ANC figure has proposed zero-based budgeting in the past to resolve this problem.

In 2020, during the intense pandemic lockdowns, then finance minister Tito Mboweni proposed implementing a zero-based budget. Unfortunately, this had no impact on government spending.

But this shows that Mboweni knew then that some kind of budget reset was needed. The numbers now point to an obvious solution, to completely change what the government does.

Some of the changes at the margins would be relatively simple. Do Ministers and deputy ministers still each require two residences and two generators?

Does Julius Malema really still qualify for a VIP Protection detail when he is now the leader of only the fourth-biggest party in Parliament? 

But none of this would really change the dial. Wholesale change would be needed.

It is clear where our priorities would lie. We need to spend as much as we can on health, education and social grants.

Read more: Zero-based budgeting and the emergency budget

We could surely spend less on civil servants and departments that make no difference.

For example, the Small Business Development department and its Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams appear to be virtually mute on the problems facing smaller firms. 

Why does this department even exist?

Has anyone in the Department of Women, Children and People Living with Disabilities made any significant impact on the lives of anyone?

While literature is important to the development of all people, everywhere, should government be paying to send a contentious delegation of people (including some with few literary achievements) to the Havana International Book Fair?

But the problem with any budget reset is that it is incredibly hard to do, and no matter how you do it, there will be pain and trauma involved.

First, there is a huge set of constituencies involved who have managed to occupy certain positions and gain from them. Whether they be Cabinet ministers or junior officials, the system works for them and they will resist any changes.

This resistance can take many forms, from strikes to go-slows to using other political parties to campaign for them.

For example, when the SABC was forced to undergo retrenchments, it became a long and difficult process with huge implications for all involved.

ANC and coalition politics

Then there is the problem of the politics of both the coalition and the ANC.

It is clear that any party that belongs to the coalition that lost a position in government would shout and scream.

And it is not just the individual who might be a Cabinet minister, but all of the staff and workers who came with them (although it seems unlikely John Steenhuisen would shed a tear if Roman Cabanac were to finally leave government).

This illustrates a feature of our politics – that politicians naturally assess their power on how much they control in government. If they have a big department, with a large budget and many employees, they are more powerful than someone with a smaller budget (of course it is not that simple, the finance ministry has much more power than education and social development, which have bigger budgets).

As a result, they will all fight to retain what they have.

It is not just parties in the coalition that will do this, but constituencies in the ANC will, too.

The primary reason the Cabinet is so big at the moment, with so many deputy ministers, is not to accommodate smaller parties, but ANC members.

Opposition would not end there. The public workers who might lose their jobs have shown themselves to be a strong political constituency. It seems no matter what evidence emerges of corruption or wastage, hardly anyone loses their job or their pension.

In the end, most of those who are insiders, right inside the political and government system, would oppose any major changes because they would feel threatened.

But it is also true that even if you did impose zero-based budgeting, you would end up with much of the same spending. 

Education and health would still be the biggest items.

And, if you were to say remove the NYDA, would you not be removing what should be a primary agency in helping young people?

There is no easy way around this, and any political fight would be hugely intense.

Considering the apparent fragility of our current situation, with a coalition already divided by a budget, and no certainty over who will take over from President Cyril Ramaphosa as ANC leader, it might be politically foolish to make any major change now.

No one would want to shake the boat too much.

As a result, the most likely outcome of the current situation is some kind of political agreement in which smallish changes are made to just fix the current problem – the shortfall of around R60-billion.

This is similar to what finance ministers have been doing for perhaps the last decade, finding ways to simply continue without making major changes.

This is the approach that has got us to this point; this is why our problems now are so bad.

But it would be irrational to assume anything will change this year. DM