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The Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) is a key tool to realise the commitments made in the Constitution, to achieve equality, dignity and socio-economic rights for all. It is also a political statement made by government to on how it understands these obligations.

Rural Health Advocacy Project (RHAP) and the Budget Justice Coalition (BJC) hosted a pre-MTBPS discussion with  civil society, media and other interest groups today to unpack how government can be held accountable to its constitutional obligations, which include enabling public participation in the budget process.

The civil society organisations called for human rights to be given greater priority in the budget, and for government to move away from its overly simplistic focus on debt reduction. In the past decade, real spending on education and health care has fallen dramatically due to austerity policies. The most asked question from the participants was: where will the money to invest in human rights come from? Daniel McLaren from SECTION27 stated that there were four key reasons for the increase in public debt over the past decade were: 1. state capture, which meant that funds intended for developmental public purposes were wasted on enriching private individuals;  the biggest impact of this on our fiscus was the capture and decapacitation of SARS, 2. low economic growth and in particular the Covid-19 induced deep recession, and 3. the gradual but consistent lowering of corporate and personal income tax rates in South Africa since 1997, which has lowered our potential tax revenue, leading to a structural budget deficit.

McLaren said SA had followed international trends in lowering taxes but that this was no longer sustainable, and that taxes on middle class, high income and wealthy individuals and corporates would be needed to ensure a balanced budget where fiscal sustainability and social sustainability aren’t traded off against each other.

Government’s responsibility is to ensure that funds are sufficient to improve human rights holistically. The webinar received a Birdseye view on a number of different sectors and unfortunately failures of the budget allocations have resulted in incredible dying consequences in many South African communities.

Budget Justice Coalition facilitated  a robust conversation between Rural Health Advocacy Project, SECTION27, HEALA, Institute for Economic Justice, Black Sash and Equal Education.

Issued by Corruption Watch