South Africa’s health system is on its knees: the budget offers no relief

RUSSELL RENSBURG|

SOUTH Africa’s 2021 medium-term budget policy statement was more of the same old narrative. It didn’t speak to the high expectations that the impact of poverty and inequality would feature strongly.

Instead South Africans got: be patient, let’s stick to the dream of a primary account surplus, then maybe then we can make the investments needed to implement expanded social security, invest in strengthening the health system and so on. Until then let’s just do more with less.

Budgets on their own don’t solve structural issues such as the effectiveness of the state. Reducing the wage bill doesn’t address the poor management or budget execution. Instead it increases the execution risk. But they do provide some insight into government plans for addressing its broader developmental priorities.

In South Africa’s case, addressing the impact of poverty and inequality on broader development is and should be our priority. For