SA is budgeting for wasteful spending given the outcomes of past 28 years

The annual budget speech has been presented by the finance minister and one thing seems to be consistent – education and health have received the biggest cuts.

The idea behind this, at least from the ANC’s logic, is that for SA to overcome its apartheid legacy and have a growing economy the country needs an educated population that is healthy to live longer. 

But it is not a budget that will create a healthy and educated society. We have seen for the past 28 years how the billions of rands poured into education and health have not given us any world-class outcomes so far.

We battled with Covid-19 and we are still unable to establish a significant footprint in the global production of vaccines. This is despite the massive investments we have made in health, even to the extent of sending young people to be trained in Cuba on universal health care.

This fate is also similar in education. Our outcomes in science and mathematics are still low and we remain a country that is below average in bringing groundbreaking innovation in information technology and science – to mention a few.

More than half of our children doing grade 4 cannot read for meaning and less than 40% of those that received NSFAS in 2019 managed to complete their three-year qualifications at the end of 2021.

I am basing these viewpoints on high expectations – which is supposed to be the case given the billions spent.

There must be world-class facilities and personnel in our health sector given the amounts listed under the health department every year. We are supposed to be hitting top results with distinctions in mathematics, biology, physical science and producing excellent talent for our universities and the economy given the amounts spent on education .

But this is not the case. We spend highly but get so much less in return. That’s wastage.

Clearly, our budgetary intentions are a small piece of the entire puzzle required to transform society in tangible terms. We need a budget that is complemented by:

• visionary politics that is anchored on coordinated planning,
• hard work from pupils and teachers that is consistent and intentional,
• transformative convictions from all involved in the system from the bottom up,
• productive public servants who work with a culture of sacrifice,
• ethical young people and children with a deep hunger, pride and joy to learn,
• an involved community that self-determines the society it wants to see,
• a collaborative programme of social consciousness that is deliberate about fixing the injustices of the past that have disadvantaged black people, and
• a society of black people that believes in itself, its potential, its heritage and in its own institutions

All these items will continue to remain impossible unless we get active to fight for a total amendment of how budgeting is structured and how spending is implemented. The government tables a high budget towards education but a deeper reading of its expenditure patterns shows that a large part of it gets spent on bloated administrative salaries – for both higher education and basic education.

Large amounts of money in these budgets get used on running these bureaucratic institutions instead of their core mandates. Rural schools spend more time fixated on the challenges surrounding the feeding scheme and scholar transport instead of quality teaching, learning and infrastructure for science and mathematics.

As things stand, we are operationalising a bloated administrative state that is leaking huge amounts of funds meant to make an impact on the actual development of our children.

The dropout rates across our education system are too high for the levels of poverty and inequality we have. Our budgets are not dealng with this crisis at all.

Millions of people continue to die from preventable diseases while others wait for hours to receive an ambulance or emergency healthcare in their townships. Our budgets are not turning around this situation at all.

SA needs a more engaged and critical citizenry to critique these budget presentations that are filled with declarationist soundbites and big percentages that do not get us anywhere in real terms.

We will continue to budget ourselves to total wastage unless we deeply interrogate the value of our taxes to actual people’s lives. 

• Dr Mzileni is research associate in the faculty of humanities at Nelson Mandela University