THE 2026 MEDIUM TERM BUDGET POLICY STATEMENT
BREAKING NEWS
BY: CHANON LECODEY MERRICKS | ONLINE EDITOR M@KE K@Si GRE@T ©®™
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BY: CHANON LECODEY MERRICKS | ONLINE EDITOR
EFF STATEMENT, THE 2026 MEDIUM TERM BUDGET POLICY STATEMENT
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) notes the weak and incoherent Medium Term Budget Policy Statement tabled by the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, in the National Assembly. It is out of touch with reality and blind to the hardship of the poor, the working class and households crushed by electricity and food prices and a deepening jobs crisis.
The EFF has been vindicated. When the Minister promised 1.6% growth in February, we warned that the number was not credible. National Treasury has now cut its own forecast to 1.2%, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects just 1%, and by yearend growth may well sit at 1% or lower.
Forecasts meant to guide municipalities, investors and households are revised down year after year because National Treasury plans around growth that does not exist while squeezing spending below inflation. The real economy confirms it. GDP contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter, and first-quarter growth was revised down.
Manufacturing shrank by 1.8% and shed 20,000 jobs in a single quarter. Investment in construction works fell by 4%. Even the 2.4% investment growth National Treasury forecasts will flow into ventures that send dividends abroad, creating jobs elsewhere.
A fiscal strategy is not a growth strategy, and privatisation is not one either. The celebration of debt stabilisation is built on fiction. Gross loan debt, projected at 78.9% of GDP in February, is now put at 78.4%. Nothing changed in how public finances are managed.
The ratio moved because the GDP figure beneath it grew, and it will move back as growth and revenue disappoint. Debt above 78% of GDP is the product of poor fiscal management. National Treasury blames state capture, COVID 19, low growth and now climate change, but never itself. Meanwhile, debt is quietly being shifted onto the balance sheets of state-owned companies.
The EFF rejects with contempt the attempt to legislate austerity under the banner of fiscal discipline. These so-called fiscal guardrails are an attack on democracy itself, designed to shield failed policies from challenge. Once austerity is written into law, future generations may win political power and bring new ideas, but every solution will need the blessing of the IMF and the World Bank rather than a democratically elected Parliament.
National Treasury remains the biggest threat to South Africa's democracy in this age of deliberate, manufactured state collapse and open fights with the United States of America. The coalition of the former liberation movement and the racist, liberal Democratic Alliance has produced no coherent macroeconomic policy to confront unemployment and infrastructure decay, while more than 13 million people who can work remain locked out of the economy.
The Minister offers no link between fiscal policy and jobs, and no target for reducing unemployment. Instead, the ANC and the DA continue to shrink the state and strip away whatever capacity survived the Zuma era. Much of this policy statement reads as a privatisation pamphlet. Private capital is offered credit guarantees to profit from electricity generation in competition with Eskom, from the railways, and from households turned into customers of municipal services. Operation Vulindlela, run jointly by the Presidency and National Treasury, drives this agenda. Having opened electricity, rail and ports to private interests, it now turns to municipal water and electricity, beyond meaningful parliamentary oversight. It measures progress by how much of the state it hands over, not by jobs created.
The same Minister who never delivered the state bank and sovereign wealth fund the President promised in 2019 moved swiftly to register the Credit Guarantee Vehicle, a sophisticated form of privatisation.
The EFF rejects the privatisation of municipal water and electricity and refuses to applaud the increase in local government's share of the equitable share to 10%. That figure exposes the collapse of the 1990s belief that municipalities could fund themselves through rates and service charges paid by unemployed and struggling households.
The President keeps making pronouncements that National Treasury either underfunds or ignores.
The National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide was adopted but never funded, and today's small allocation is a knee-jerk reaction. The President said insourcing must happen, yet this statement says nothing about it. The fuel relief announced on the eve of the local government elections is a ploy to win votes for a dying liberation movement, not a plan. There is no structural answer to rising fuel prices, which proves that the fuel levy cannot be left to the whim of the Minister.
Ending it in early December will send workers into the festive season with empty pockets.
The EFF welcomes the continuation of the Social Relief of Distress grant and calls for a permanent grant that helps unemployed graduates and youth meet their basic needs.
This statement is a preview of the budget to be tabled in February. South Africans must prepare for more suffering, because government has left them on their own.
The EFF will study the medium-term budget policy statement in detail and make further comment.
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