FAIR BUDGET MR MINISTER, BUT…

We have had fair and expectedly mixed reactions from different sectors of the society after the finance minister’s budget speech. And there is mainly a lot of positivity. As is the norm, education and health got the lion’s share, respectively, with the sports budget remaining unchanged and getting the lowest. There was a welcome, albeit slight review in social grants with the elderly set to get E100 increase. Some have obviously viewed this increase as a joke, given the ever-rising inflation and expected in rise commodities such as electricity and water.  I am no economist myself, but I do have my two cents worth on this subject. My first shot will be on the fact that we have a budget that we can’t fully finance.

Government

The E1.8 billion deficit and E35.5 billion public debt is not at all insignificant. This means government will be going hand-in-cap trying get the finances to make good these discrepancies. Also shocking to me was the whopping E1.77 billion allocation that has been made to defence. Notably, this allocation exceeds that of agriculture. We may never get an explanation from government on why we needed to prioritise defence over food security, to put it bluntly. We are a country that faces no known threat from our neighbours. We certainly are not even big in supporting peace-keeping missions. With no know threat to the integrity of our borders and any civil war, the question then becomes why such a colossal allocation.

While we applaud the significant allocations to education and health, but some of this defence money could have gone to support the arts, for instance. We remain woefully far from acting in the spirit and letter of the 2003 Maputo Declaration and the resolutions of the Malabo Summit, where we committed to spend at least 10 per cent of the budget on agriculture and reconfirmed that agriculture should remain high on the development agenda of the continent. We continue, in this regard, to let our people and the African continent down.

Impression

In the absence of a clear explanation for the logic behind this high anticipated defence expenditure, this gives a sinister impression that government is arming itself against us emaSwati. I am happy to be challenged if there is another contrary conclusion that can be reasonably be drawn. Another very unfortunate aspect of our budgetary process is the grey areas that remain restricted from public scrutiny. There are pockets of our national spending that take up a lot of funds, which if we were to be exposed to the figures, we would be fall flat on our backs as a taxpayers. Until and unless we have total access to the entire budget and each allocation and give our elected representatives carte blanche to debate and question, we will never be able to keep tabs on our financial path.

There’s way to much classified expenditure in this country that enables rampant corruption and wasteful expenditure. In his Speech from the Throne, His Majesty once again harped on the chronic illness of corruption. It is up to the Hospital Hill now to do what must be done to take this beyond the rhetoric. The cancer of corruption has permeated virtually every sector of our society and is now almost second nature to us. We really have not demonstrated to ourselves as a nation that we are serious about rooting out this malign cancer which rears its ugly head quite dominantly in government. The procurement space is one hot spot for corruption, but you will never see heads roll.

Corruption

The criminal justice system, I dare say, is also becoming a haven for corruption. From the police service, prosecutors, magistrates and judges, we have heard harrowing stories of how money talks. Justice is now for the highest bidder. Recently, the auditor general revealed in his report that there is close to E1 billion unauthorised expenditure. This is not the first time this office uncovers such irregularities but there are no prizes for guessing if anyone will ever be held responsible and for heads to roll. We have a long established, albeit unwritten principle in this country that you can get away with anything if you work for government.

There’s even a saying in siSwati that ‘hulumende akanamanyala’, which is testament to this impunity culture that now sadly defines us. The onus is now on parliamentarians to hold the Executive accountable and track expenditure. The legislature must ensure that the auditor general’s office is protected and supported to properly execute its mandate without fear or favour. This is the only institution, so far, that gives us a fair picture into what happens to taxpayers’ money. In the absence of proper controls, checks and balances, it is only human nature to exploit any unattended gaps for personal aggrandisement.

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