Is service delivery the primary responsibility of the judiciary? The column “Hi Mzansi, have we seen justice?”, proves how easily it is to distract people on who exactly is failing the poor.
Between Constitutional Court justices and elected politicians heading government ministries, is it really that complicated to figure out which arms of the state are primarily responsible for the type of poor service delivery that propels protracted high levels of poverty, unemployment and inequality?
Who does not know in 2022 to who the minister of finance allocates billions of rand annually to deliver housing, water, health, education, infrastructure and all other services essential to maintain and improve the general quality of life?
Some well-known facts of life are conveniently ignored in the current furore. SA’s system of governance is divided into three branches: the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, each with its own roles and functions. Having three pillars of governance is premised on creating a system of checks and balances so that no branch abuses power unfettered.
The legislature (parliament) is empowered to issue enactments, make laws (including the constitution) and holds the government accountable. The executive (president and cabinet) is vested with the power to make policy decisions and implement laws, and governs the country through a variety of ministries. Government in SA is divided into three spheres: national, provincial and local.
The judiciary upholds the laws by adjudicating disputes. Each sphere's responsibility is outlined in the constitution. The governments of each sphere have a political and administrative arm. The political arm creates the laws and policies, while the administrative arm is the part of government that provides services and implements the laws and policies.
Without fail, each February the minister of finance takes centre stage to deliver the national budget. The purpose of the national budget speech is that it provides the executive – ministers of the ruling party and not constitutional judges – with the money it needs to deliver its policies and run vital services in areas such as health, education and defence.
If one wants to know who is failing the poor and unemployed, first check how the budget allocation to each ministry is managed. The auditor-general, that tough official who lives every year to recite a never-ending horror story of mismanaged budgets, says irregular expenditure by national and provincial government departments increased by 34% in the 2020/2021 financial year to R167bn, indicating the flouting of supply chain laws when decisions are made.
There are 115 auditees (48 departments and 67 public entities) that obtained a clean audit outcome, compared to 109 in the previous year. Together, these auditees are responsible for 19% of the R1,9-trillion expenditure budget managed by national and provincial government.
Unite 4 Mzansi – an initiative led by the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) and business leaders – commissioned the Stellenbosch University's Centre for Complex Systems in Transition to analyse in much more depth how deep corruption ran in the country.
SA lost R1.5-trillion through corruption in just the years between 2014 and 2019, according to the Unite 4 Mzansi's first case study titled State Capture 101.
“Some of our elected leaders continue to steal from the poor, hungry, sick and dying," said University of the Free State chancellor and one of the Unite 4 Mzansi advocates, Bonang Mohale.
Pinning widespread poverty the solely to the constitution is irrational. The timing of the column is instructive. It is stuff straight out of the Bell Pottinger playbook. Political manoeuvring, not proper record setting, cuts deep in the column, with most observers unwittingly drawn into intra-party factional contestation ahead of the release of the State of Capture report, and its direct and indirect implications on the ANC December elective conference.
It is indeed a civic duty to set the record straight on our system of governance so that every citizen is able to discern who is actually failing in using a shrinking tax base to address an economy in decline, and the associated high unemployment, poverty and inequality.
• Sitshange is a Sowetan reader
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