”Trevor does it again!” is a headline we newspaper people have come to rely on at this time of year. It is too trite a formulation, though, and it does not properly credit the complex achievements of 11 years’ planning that have enabled the finance minister to deliver budgets with strong savings, spending and tax relief components for six years now.
Manuel’s record is not perfect. The growth, employment and redistribution (Gear) plan cut too deep when spending was initially slashed, and we pay the price in massive staff shortages and education and health crises, which now seem impervious to the new billions.
But it is also worth crediting the macroeconomic discipline Manuel put in place all those years ago. It enabled him to table a budget that aims to cut through the national gloom by speaking to a range of constituencies. The unions may say he did not go far enough in spending, but real budget increases in health, education and welfare must be welcomed. Spending will increase by 6% after adjustments for inflation. That increase is designed to be sustainable even in the very plausible scenario that global growth takes a serious knock this year. In any event, it is not to be sneezed at. Grant increases are not as mingy as before; the child and old-age grants buoy many millions of poor households.
Of course, Manuel had the space to increase the grants even more than he did and if the energy crisis abates and the economy continues to grow, he should give serious consideration to growing these transfers. There is a positive correlation between children who are well fed and solid performance at school. We can build no better foundation.
Social grants, too, are a way of bypassing inefficient government departments and putting money directly in the hands of people who need it; that realisation should not be neglected amid anxiety about ‘dependencyâ€.
The left is also klapping Manuel over the persistent budget surplus, refusing to buy his explanation that the extra cash is only available because of a cyclical uptick in revenues, and shouldn’t be relied on. But a surplus is not a bad thing. With the current account deficit ever wider, and a country that seems congenitally allergic to saving, the government is wise to sock some money away for a rainy day. Certainly it is a better idea than pushing it out to provincial governments, which return hundreds of millions of unspent rands, or to ill-considered prestige projects.
There is a danger, however, in our excitement at yet another remarkable budget, and it is that we have come to regard Manuel as the sole guarantor of our national wellbeing. He is the keeper of the keys to the treasury, but the stewards we must look to are those in charge of our education, health and welfare systems, who must now ensure that the budget billions are used honestly and diligently.
The ultimate test of the budget is in efficient schools with good teachers, hospitals that make people healthier, not sicker, the delivery of appropriate social grants to the right people, and the building of infrastructure that truly gives us room to grow.
Praise is due to Manuel. The rest of the Cabinet must now pick up the baton.
We wear what we like
The Taliban-style outrage at the Noord Street taxi tank, where a group of drivers stripped and sexually assaulted Nwabisa Ngcukana for wearing a miniskirt, has nothing to do with anyone’s culture being belittled. It is, simply and profoundly, a scary spike on the graph of the erosion of human rights.
Let’s get one bugbear straight. We know not all taxi drivers and rank marshals are power-drunk, sjambok-snapping brutes.
But the argument that, like others, the taxi community has been forced by ineffectual law enforcement to turn vigilante and make up its own rules of crime and punishment, is without merit.
Vigilantism — which often hides behind the skirts of someone’s interpretation of ‘their†culture — breeds intolerance, aggression and a heady sense of impunity. Beating a thief caught stealing a commuter’s purse is not a service to humanity, it’s the flip side of the same bent coin.
Many commuters will gather round to applaud such ‘justiceâ€. From here it is no great leap for the inflamed ‘court†to grab a young woman wearing sexy clothes. Hey, lots of people will agree with the on-the-spot sentence meted out. And lots do. In the wake of the attack on Ngcukana, one taxi driver at the Noord Street rank told a Mail & Guardian reporter that he hadn’t witnessed it himself, but he wished he had.
The only ‘good†thing to come out of this awful story is that maybe, just maybe, this time, something will change.
Instead of falling off the front page after a day to make way for a fresher crime story, this case seems to have shocked both the public and officialdom out of our customary compassion fatigue.
Two Gauteng ministers, the taxi industry leadership and the Johannesburg Metro Police chief are taking a hard line on this one: all have publicly condemned the attack and all seem serious about arresting the culprits and finding ways to curb, and eventually, stamp out, such crimes at ranks.
If talk turns into sustained action, it will be an honourable start.
Miniskirts must stay where they belong: on young women who epitomise fashion and fun on hot summer days.