Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana. Photographer: Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In his 2025 budget speech presented on Wednesday, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana opened the section on public services with a sobering account of South Africa’s crumbling healthcare system.
He read aloud from an open letter written by Sarah Stein, a medical student at the University of Cape Town.
Her words painted a bleak picture of life on the front lines — delivery rooms without gloves, nurses having to buy their own protective gear, and doctors making impossible choices because of limited intensive care beds.
It was for this reason, said Godongwana, “that the budget maintains the expenditure trajectory presented in the March 12 budget”.
To address chronic underfunding and infrastructure collapse in basic services, government spending over the medium term will amount to R6.69 trillion, with an additional R180.1 billion allocated to critical areas, he said.
Although lower than the R232.6 billion proposed in March, there is a focus on education and healthcare.
The provincial education budget baseline for 2025–28 is set at R1.04 trillion, while an additional R9.5 billion has been allocated to retain teachers and expand staffing.
A further R10 billion — announced in March — remains in place to broaden access to early childhood development (ECD).
The ECD subsidy will rise from R17 to R24 per child per day, supporting an additional 700,000 children up to five years old.
The provincial health budget stands at R845 billion over the medium term.
It will be boosted by R20.8 billion to hire 800 post-community service doctors, alleviate shortages of essential goods and services, and help the sector meet personnel costs and reduce unpaid obligations (accruals).
While not explicitly mentioning the controversial National Health Insurance scheme in his speech, Godonogwana said 61 cents of every non-interest government rand will go to the social wage, which includes healthcare and education.
The minister also did not increase levies on the country’s sugar tax, as per his March budget.