D-Day for Godongwana’s Herculean budget reset

Resetting the trajectory of the South African economy

- MUSHTAK PARKER

NOT EVEN a wedding planner would dare organise a nuptial on the same day a far-flung foreign “suitor with benefits” threatens his conditional “love”, or else.

Never mind the fact that on the same day, May 21, South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana will have another go at tabling his long-disrupted 2025 National Budget to Parliament a simple function of government that should have been delivered in March.

How strange and perhaps unprecedented that a national budget of critical importance, at a time of the dire state of the economy, will be tabled to Parliament in the absence of the Head of Government. The only common feature is the claim that both the budget and the meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa will be attempts at resetting the trajectory and purpose of the South African economy on the one hand, and Pretoria’s troubled relations with the US on the other hand.

While the budget vacillation either exposed the fault lines in the Government of National Unity (GNU) coalition led by President Ramaphosa or the politics of the proverbial gun pointed at the head of a compromised administration by the second-largest party in the GNU, the DA, the indaba between Presidents Ramaphosa and Trump at the White House today will likely not result in a meeting of the minds.

The gaps are too huge ideology, personality, acumen, intellect, chutzpah, military might, financial clout, moral compass, strength of purpose, negotiating playbook, ability to entertain, and history. Ramaphosa’s working visit to Washington, DC, between May 19-22, informs the President's Office, is “to discuss bilateral, regional and global issues of interest, and provides a platform to reset the strategic relationship between the two countries.”