MINI-BUDGET
CAROL PATON: Will the market understand if Gigaba blinks out an SOS?
Paralysed. That is what we are. That, too, is what Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba is on the eve of his maiden budget, which comes at a critical inflection point for SA’s public finances. Paralysis sums up the politics of the medium-term budget policy statement and we can expect that paralysis will infect its content, too. While the cause of the paralysis is well known — Jacob Zuma presides like a monolith over our politics, blocking any decision not to his liking — the detail is worth a little unpacking. So what are the remarkable things about the politics of the budget this time? The first is that Gigaba does not have political support. This is not so different from the past. In February, Pravin Gordhan didn’t have it either and Nhlanhla Nene, who preceded him, had it only to a limited extent. But unlike Gordhan and Nene, who took Zuma on and lost, Gigaba doesn’t want to lose. Equally, he doesn’t want to be the finance minister who takes us into the arms of the IMF. So, he has had ...
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