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Ahead of Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana\u2019s budget speech, civil society groups are voicing serious concerns about what the government\u2019s proposed changes could mean for South Africa\u2019s most vulnerable citizens.<\/p>\n
Many fear the impact of a higher VAT and cut in social grant spending will have a devastating impact on South Africa’s poor, who live below the poverty line.<\/p>\n
The concerns follow reports that\u00a0Godongwana has made it clear that if the VAT is to remain unchanged, he may be forced to cut the Social Relief of Distress Grant, which has provided crucial financial support for millions of South Africans struggling to make ends meet.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson for rights group, Black Sash, says it would be absurd for government to blame revenue shortfalls on grants.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is money in the budget. The SRD Grant is not the reason for revenue shortfalls and it should not be used as a convenient excuse for increasing the cost of living for everyone, especially the poor,\u201d says Oliver Meth.<\/p>\n
He stresses that the SRD grant is critical to keeping hunger at bay for South Africa’s poor, who are still feeling the residues of apartheid’s social construct and economic policies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe SRD grant is not negotiable. If the Finance Minister is serious about fiscal responsibility, he should start by plugging the hole where public funds are disappearing, not by squeezing more from those who already have the least,\u201d Meth added.<\/p>\n
SAVE SA Movement’s Tebogo Mashilompane is similarly concerned, describing any cuts to the SRD grant as \u201ctantamount to torture.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s called for an increase to the SRD grant, instead.<\/p>\n
Mashilompane also criticised government\u2019s approach to VAT, saying that increases did not address unemployment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they increased VAT from 14% to 15%, even after that we still experienced high unemployment. So there\u2019s no history that says increasing VAT helps with unemployment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s urged the Finance Minister to reconsider the proposed 2% VAT hike, as Government of National Unity (GNU) partners remain divided over the potential tax increase.<\/p>\n
Economist, Dawie Roodt, believes the government is focusing on the wrong issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Minister is playing politics here. He\u2019s trying to make it seem as if VAT and the SRD grant are at odds. That\u2019s simply untrue,\u201d Roodt said.<\/p>\n
He emphasised that the real issue was government spending.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a question of where we\u2019re going to get more money, the bigger issue is how we\u2019re gonna cut state spending. They\u2019re wasting too much money, they\u2019re too inefficient,\u201d Roodt added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are many places where they can cut back on state spending without affecting the grants. One obvious answer is to cut back on the civil servants\u2019 wage bill. They\u2019ve been getting above-inflation wage hikes for a number of years. These civil servants are mostly overpaid and underworked,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
All eyes will be on Minister Godongwane at 2pm today as he tables the contentious budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ahead of Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana\u2019s budget speech, civil society groups are voicing serious concerns about what the government\u2019s proposed changes could mean for South Africa\u2019s most vulnerable citizens. Many fear the impact of a higher VAT and cut in social grant spending will have a devastating impact on South ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":29003,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/005A008A-CED2-4967-945D-B320B9011DE9.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29000"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29025,"href":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29000\/revisions\/29025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yfm.co.za\/devworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}