Naledi Pandor and Lindiwe Sisulu wore broad grins during Wednesday’s Budget speech, as Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel repeatedly turned towards their seats on Parliament’s front benches to announce new funding for projects that put education and housing at the heart of the government’s social development plans.
“These elements of the social wage contribute over time to skills and productive opportunities, so that dependence can give way to self-reliance,” he said, signalling a shift in emphasis from expanding social grants and providing basic services to strategies for creating healthier and more productive communities.
The importance of balancing social welfare considerations — which can be overwhelming in developing countries — with the investment imperatives of economic growth has long been a theme of Manuel’s. It finds expression in this Budget in his stress on the role of education, housing and health in economic development.
Education officials said they had won a number of victories, in the form of new funding for further education and training colleges, improved salaries for teachers and more financial aid for tertiary students.
“The long-term solution to the skills deficit lies in improving the quality of school education,” says the Budget Review.
Spending increases for school buildings and textbooks have been a feature of previous budgets, it points out, but this year teachers’ salaries, at the centre of last year’s bruising public service wage dispute, get a R6,9-billion fillip. Most is targeted, officials say, at the retention and development of maths and science teaching skills.
This was one of the issues over which the National Treasury and public service administration initially fought the unions, arguing that across-the-board, above-inflation pay rises cramp spending on more qualified teachers.
Teachers — and police who get an additional R4,9-billion over the three-year medium-term expenditure period — appear to have bumped off the list nurses and doctors, who will not see an advance in the increases budgeted for last year.
About R1-billion goes to improving the buildings and equipment of further education and training colleges, which will see a joint programme of the education and labour departments aimed at improving their performance in vocational training, said Department of Education spokesperson Tommy Makode. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme will be recapitalised to the tune of R776-million.
Warming to his theme of creativity — sparked by the success of uCarmen e Khayelitsha at the Berlin Film Festival — Manuel went on to say that Sophiatown “in the midst of its destruction” produced “the rhythms of kwela, the patha-patha jive, the musical genius of Miriam Makeba and Kippie Moeketsi’s shantytown sextet, and the talents of Todd Matshikiza, Can Themba and Walter Nhlapo”. Much more should be possible, he said, in redeveloping the suburbs and townships of South Africa.
The Budget provides an additional R2-billion for housing delivery, and R5,4-billion for municipal infrastructure and free basic services.
“I’m really just a housing activist on long-term deployment to government,” Manuel joked.