As finance minister Tito Mboweni prepares to deliver his medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS) in parliament on Wednesday, he may consider the full text of a letter left by one outgoing British chancellor to his successor, as a useful summary of our predicament: “I’m afraid there is no money”.

Our national fiscal hole is, frighteningly, even deeper than that, because there is also no room to raise taxes on already overburdened working families, and no room to raise more debt...

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