Open letters to Ramaposa and Government

Dear Mr President,

2024 is a watershed moment for South Africa. This year marks the 30th anniversary of South Africa’s constitutional democracy and the seventh time South African citizens will exercise their democratic rights in a general election. As you finalised your recent State of the Nation Address (SONA), your last to be delivered to this sixth democratic parliament, we do not doubt that you too were reflecting on these milestones.

In this historic year, we call on you to align government’s policy and implementation efforts behind the needs of the country’s marginalised people and place these at the centre of your post-SONA activities. We call on you to ensure that government speaks with one voice, coherently advancing and funding stated policy priorities. This would ensure that the advancement of constitutional rights is prioritised in key government plans and budgets.

Policy coherence requires the alignment of efforts across cabinet, and in particular between stated policy priorities and the National Budget. Such alignment cannot be successful if the Minister of Finance and National Treasury continue to act unilaterally, undermining programmes that are constitutional entitlements and stated government policy.

In recent years, we have observed that while the SONA has made certain commitments, National Treasury has either failed to resource these programmes or has deliberately cut funding to them without any accountability. In 2023, National Treasury unilaterally issued instructions to all departments and state entities to make widespread and devastating budget cuts, later repudiated by Cabinet. National Treasury continues to pursue hyper-austerity in critical economic and social services. This curtails the realisation of socioeconomic rights, hampers economic growth, and undermines the gains made through recent government interventions.

We call on you to hold the Minister of Finance and National Treasury to account and ensure that policy priorities will be allocated adequate funds and that the macroeconomic policy stance is supportive of your developmental agenda. Your Presidency has responded to calls from progressive movements by taking positive action in the fight against unemployment and poverty through innovative programmes such as the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) Grant, the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative (PYEI), and the Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES).

The PES alone has created over one million opportunities since 2020. In the context of staggering unemployment, we need to ensure that all public employment programmes are sufficiently funded and, where necessary, improved to address the precarious nature of these jobs.

However, National Treasury continues to attempt to actively defund the PYEI and PES, and it appears the extension of the PES may come at the expense of other key public employment programmes, undermining the gains made. You have repeatedly noted the importance of the SRD Grant and heeded calls by civil society to extend it.

In your letter to the nation in March 2023, you reference evidence showing that grant beneficiaries have become more economically active and are spending money in businesses in their areas, therefore keeping the local economy afloat. A study of 42 countries published in 2023 by researchers at the University of Sao Paolo finds that social protection spending has a high multiplier effect on GDP growth and that the effect is much more pronounced in low-income countries and countries with high levels of inequality.

These benefits are being consistently undermined by National Treasury’s ideological choice to reduce the grant’s budget allocation from R44 billion in 2022/23 to R36 billion in 2023/24 and to R33 billion in 2023’s Medium Term Budget Policy Statement. These budget cuts have been justified by underspending on the grant by DSD and SASSA. However, National Treasury has pressurised DSD and SASSA into excluding deserving recipients from accessing the SRD Grant, thus generating the underspending, and in turn creating an excuse to cut the budget further.

This has resulted in working-aged people living below the food poverty line receiving the grant, whose value has remained stagnant, in the context of rising hunger. In addition, other social grants – lifelines for the poor and those who cannot work – have not kept pace with the cost of living. For example, the Child Support Grant received a year- on-year increase of just 4.2% in April 2023, at a time when food infl ation soared to over 14%. Already, there are signs that child stunting and mortality rates are rising. Previous SONA speeches have

referenced the urgency in overcoming gender-based violence (GBV), correctly referring to GBV and Femicide (GBVF) as a “pandemic” in the country. Interventions to tackle this must recognise the gendered nature of the triple challenge of inequality, poverty, and unemployment – the root causes of GBVF. Investment in public provisioning must foreground protecting women and recognise their disproportionate care work burden. Instead, National Treasury’s budget cuts have disproportionately impacted marginalised women in the country, raising the burden of care. Promises of tackling GBVF must be accompanied by concrete action and the required funding.

South Africa faces severe socio-economic challenges. Addressing these challenges requires bold political leadership and enormous courage. SONA 2024 provided a historic opportunity to set our country on a new course. Mr President, if you had announced a programme in SONA that would move us decisively in this direction, you would have had our support for such a national effort.

Yours sincerely,

• Institute for Economic Justice
• Budget Justice Coalition (BJC)
• Children’s Institute, UCT
• Corruption Watch
• Equal Education
• Healthy Living Alliance
• (HEALA)
• Health Justice Initiative (HJI)
• National Education, Health
• and Allied Workers’ Union
• (NEHAWU)
• Open Secrets
• #PayTheGrants
• Pietermaritzburg Economic
• Justice and Dignity Group
• (PMBEJD)
• RightfulShare
• SECTION 27
• Social Policy Initiative (SPI)
• Socio-Economic Rights
• Institute of South Africa (SERI)
• Youth Capital.