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Yesterday’s budget presented by Finance Minister, Malusi Gigaba, will have a crippling blow on the people of Gauteng who are already under strain due to the disastrous economic climate that has been inflicted on them by the ANC.

Gauteng Premier David Makhura, indicated that he was a man of the people and would do what is best for citizens. Yet he has failed to live up to this task.

In cahoots with President Cyril Ramaphosa, they perpetuated the e-Toll system to tax people for using the province’s freeways, now with Minister Gigaba’s announcement of a 52-cent hike in the fuel levy, moving around the province will become a tax burdened exercise affecting every single resident.

The knock-on effect of this is that the cost of living, especially food, will sky-rocket to levels unassailable for many. Coupled with the increase in VAT, life is going to be hard for every citizen of this province.

It is now a certainty that Gauteng’s poor and unemployed, which currently sits at an expanded rate of 33%, will grow. The working class is now threatened with job losses and a lower standard of living. The poorest of the poor will find themselves in an even worse position.

The loss of equitable share to provinces by a massive R4.7 billion will hamper the roll out of much needed infrastructure programmes – programmes that would have gone some way to alleviating unemployment.

Given that Gauteng experiences high levels of inward-migration from other provinces, this funding is critical in ensuring that services such as healthcare, education and housing can be improved and increased to deal with demand.

The massive reduction of funding will see an already burdened system pushed to the brink of collapse.

These hardships could have been avoided.

The actions of the ANC over the past nine years have brought us to this point.

Corruption, state capture and Constitutional abandonment have eaten away at the fabric of our society – and because of it, we are now starting to pay the price for the ANC’s failure.

A nation cannot tax itself into prosperity. Behind the numbers are human beings that have done nothing to deserve this fate.

The people of Gauteng are paying for a decade of gross financial and resource mismanagement by the ANC, and will pay even more under Ramaphosa and Makhura’s ANC-led administrations.

The DA has a vision to get Gauteng back on the road to prosperity, but this requires a Total Change, not just minor alterations to faces in positions of power.

Come 2019, the DA will bring about the Total Change that is needed to revive the fortunes of Gauteng – not through talk-shops, or absorbent taxes and rip-off schemes, but through inclusive and progressive policies that will benefit every single resident.

Issued by DA