GHALEB CACHALIA: All parties guilty of horse-trading to control purse

Lies and horse-trading abound in the business of politics. All parties are guilty. Behind the mantra of ANC socialism lies the reality of mismanagement, and the creation of elites while most people (largely black) wallow in poverty.

The DA’s championing of economic growth belies the reality that this will benefit businesses (largely white) while teeny neoliberal droplets trickle down to the masses, mostly in the form of wage packets from burger outlets or other businesses freed from pesky regulations about minimum wages. 

In horse-trading over the budget the DA wanted oversight of spending by their ministers, the entry of multiple players into each of Eskom’s functions, and a say in the trajectory of economic growth strategies — including a review of the administrative burden for small and micro businesses — all in return for a year-long acceptance, not a 30-day review, of the proposed half percentage point increase in VAT.

A new alignment of parties constituting a majority has now agreed to give the  National Treasury until May 1 to revert with an alternative to the VAT increase. They too will demand their pound of flesh for saving the ANC, and are reconciled with the budget framework — leaving the DA out in the cold. 

The EFF and MK are waiting to see how this plays out. The EFF is more ideologically aligned to the ANC’s mantra — pushing outwardly for a faster implementation of the ANC’s national democratic revolution: a gradual shift from an inherited and skewed capitalist system towards a form of antediluvian socialism. MK has dubious allies within the ANC. 

But it’s all about the power of the purse; about who has a say on spending and fiscal policy because that determines the trajectory of the ideological shibboleths — who gets what, no matter what the rallying cry is. It’s all about the moolah.

Former Business Day editor Tim Cohen, writing in Currency, understands the pitfalls of the ANC spending agenda but then goes on to say that “the press in SA has largely contrived to make this look like the DA’s fault when it is totally obvious that the ANC did a dirty and then did what the party always does when it does a dirty: claim sotto voce  that the DA is racist”.

So it was only the ANC that did the dirty, despite the nature of the game and the DA’s demands, which “proposed a whole range of positive, sensible ideas” to achieve growth, reduce taxes and review spending — if ever, the stuff of white knights to the rescue, crying out for nuance. 

Anyway, the real question, apart from who benefits, is: how, in the absence of trust or little understanding that politics is often a dirty game, is anyone expected to buy into a no-blame scenario and an acceptance of future responsibility — especially in a young democracy where there are no rules in politics and it is more like mixed martial arts than boxing, as politician and former professional boxer Vitali Klitschko observed about his nascent Ukraine? 

This is further complicated as one side desperately tries to find a superior moral justification for selfishness, to quote JK Galbraith, the Canadian-born, widely read and influential economist, and the other clings, in Churchill’s words, to a gospel of envy and a philosophy of failure — at least in their definition of each other. 

Meanwhile, the markets will momentarily settle as we wait and see what the Treasury’s unenviable task delivers, mark time until the next fracas in our fragile democracy, absorb global economic shocks, and watch MK and the EFF with a beady eye. 

• Cachalia is a former DA MP and public enterprises spokesperson.