By Amy Musgrave
President Cyrill Ramaphosa has come out in defence of Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana over the budget fiasco, saying he should not resign, but instead it should be used as an opportunity for “all of us to learn from this” to strengthen the budgetary process.
It should also be viewed as South Africa maturing as a democracy, said Ramaphosa who was speaking to journalists following a Workers’ Day rally in Middelburg, Mpumalanga. It was also addressed by Congress of SA Trade Unions president Zingiswa Losi and SA Communist Party general secretary Solly Mapaila.
He said that in the past the budget was a “one way type of process”, but now it has been opened up for institutions, political parties and ordinary people to make contributions.
“… because we are drawing a lot of lessons from all this, this is something that we need to take on board and it doesn’t lead to a minister of finance resigning or stepping down. No, it should be on all of us to say what lessons are we learning from this and what is it that we can do,” Ramaphosa said.
“We are learning, and what we have learned from this there is a silver lining. (As) much as it has been a major hiccup, a major problem, but it’s a problem that has its own solutions and on the 21st (of May when the third instalment of the budget is tabled) we are going to solve this problem and then move on, so nothing is really broken.”
The budget, the state of the democracy for workers and next year’s local government elections were some of the key issues addressed by speakers at the rally.
Losi said that Cosatu would only support a budget that was worker friendly, while Mapaila said the SACP had not been consulted on the third budget, politically or from the government.
“So that is the foundation of the problem. The Treasury must allocate budgets for reindustrialisation led by the public sector because the private sector that we have tried to accommodate as much as possible, they just go away with profit. They don’t care about the well-being of South Africans,’ he said.
Losi told the gathering that Cosatu did not fight for a democracy that delivered “crumbs” to workers.
“As a federation… we demand transformation, not tokensim… we a very clear in this federation that the state must serve the working class, not the elite.
“We are very clear as Cosatu, president, that we did not wage a struggle for us to see the democratic state to become a playground,” she said.
On next year’s local government polls, which the SACP plans to contest, Losi appealed to the ANC and SACP not to divide workers.
“What we do not want is a divided Cosatu, what we do not want is a divided working class, what we do not want is to see us ourselves going below 40% and losing complete state power and, therefore, as our alliance you have a responsibility to unite us, or else history will bury us all.”
ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula conceded at the party’s Northern Cape elective conference last month that the SACP’s decision to contest the elections separately from the tripartite alliance would have a negative impact on the ANC.
Cosatu and its affiliates are currently in discussions on the SACP resolution.
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