TSHEPO KOKA | Fiscal discipline is not national progress

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There is something rather reassuring about a government budget. The tables are orderly, the projections are carefully calculated, the debt is stabilising and the deficit is expected to narrow. For a moment, the country appears to be in capable hands.

Then one steps outside the Treasury presentation and back into South Africa — the jobless are still jobless; the cost of living remains unforgiving; communities continue to experience unreliable services; and young people are asked to remain hopeful in an economy that struggles to make room for them.

This is where my scepticism begins. Not because the numbers do not matter, but because we have become rather good at presenting fiscal management as if it were the same thing as national progress.

The medium-term budget policy statement, presented on October 21, offers some encouraging news. The government expects gross loan debt to decline from 78.4% of GDP in 2025/26 to 76.6% by 2029/30. The budget deficit is projected to narrow, while the primary surplus is expected to grow.

These are not trivial achievements. A country cannot indefinitely borrow its way out of trouble, and debt-service costs leave less money available for priorities. But there is a difference between stabilising the state’s finances and improving the lives of the people who sustain that state. Perhaps we should begin by asking a slightly impolite question: whose good news is this?

The same statement projects economic growth of just 1.2% for 2026. Unemployment, meanwhile, rose from 31.4% in the final quarter of 2025 to 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026.

The Treasury notes that South Africa has 426,000 more people employed than before the Covid pandemic, but also 1.8-million more unemployed people. In other words, employment has grown, but not enough to absorb the expanding labour force.

These figures should unsettle any easy celebration of fiscal progress. An economy can improve its balance sheet without creating enough work. It can meet its targets while households experience economic insecurity.

Perhaps the problem lies partly in the way we speak about the budget. The presentation encourages us to admire the management of money. The public has every right to ask about the management of national possibility

Growth matters, but growth alone is not a development strategy. The real test is whether economic activity creates jobs, supports productive businesses and expands opportunities beyond those who are already economically secure.

A percentage point in a Treasury forecast may look modest on paper. For a young person who has been searching for work for years, the distance between a forecast and an actual job is enormous.

The government says social spending remains central to its priorities. The social wage accounts for about 60% of consolidated non-interest expenditure. There are also additional allocations for areas including health, education, local government and infrastructure. That’s important. But budgets tell us what government intends to spend; they do not, by themselves, tell us what citizens will receive.

An allocation for infrastructure is not a functioning water system. Money set aside for education is not proof that a child has access to a decent classroom. A municipal transfer is not evidence that rubbish will be collected or a broken pipe repaired. The Treasury itself acknowledges weaknesses in project preparation, procurement and contract management, and that infrastructure grants have not always translated into timely delivery.

This admission deserves more attention than another polished graph. If the government already knows that spending does not consistently translate into results, then the question is no longer simply how much money has been allocated. It is why the machinery responsible for turning that money into public value continues to disappoint.

The statement identifies R38.1bn in targeted savings through measures including tighter grant administration, reprioritisation in human settlements, efficiencies in national departments and the recovery of accumulated cash surpluses from public entities. Some of these measures may be sensible. Waste and duplication should not be protected merely because they occur inside government. Public money belongs to the public.

But savings are not automatically a public benefit. Their value depends on what is cut, what is protected and where the money ultimately goes. Reprioritising a housing grant, for instance, must not become an accounting success at the expense of people waiting for adequate shelter.

I am not arguing that the government should abandon fiscal discipline. Debt matters. Waste matters. So does the cost of borrowing. A state that cannot manage its finances will eventually undermine its ability to serve its people. But fiscal discipline should be a means to an end, not the end itself.

Perhaps the problem lies partly in the way we speak about the budget. The presentation encourages us to admire the management of money. The public has every right to ask about the management of national possibility. The government may call this a budget. Citizens should ask for a result. The numbers matter, but they must answer to lived experience. Otherwise we risk building an increasingly respectable fiscal story around an economy that remains deeply disappointing to millions.

Econometrics should function as conscience, not camouflage.

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