ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula has slammed the Democratic Alliance accusing the party of pulling all stops to frustrate any transformation efforts.
This follows the DA’s rejection of the budget tabled by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana on Wednesday.
In its rejection the DA cited the 0.5 % increase in Value Added Tax and what it believes are ill-conceived policies such as the National Health Insurance and the BELA Act.
Mbalula dismissed the DA’s reasoning saying it was clear it ( DA) was opposed to any form of transformation.
“As expected, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has once again revealed its anti-transformation agenda by opposing this progressive budget proposal. Their opposition is not based on concerns for fiscal responsibility but is instead a desperate attempt to undermine transformation, protect white monopoly capital, and roll back the democratic gains made over the past three decades,” said Mbalula during a media briefing at the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg on Thursday.
He said the former opposition party and now key player in the so-called Government of National Unity was also using the budget process to bargain for more influence in the multiparty coalition it leads with the ANC.
“The DA seeks to use the budget process as leverage to renegotiate its role within the GNU, not because it has the interests of the people at heart, but because it is determined to advance an agenda that prioritises privilege over progress,” said Mbalula.
He said the DA was all about white privilege and cautioned the public against being hoodwinked by the party under the guise of being anti-VAT increase and pro-poor.
He referred to the cessation agenda in the Western Cape pursued to create similar to Israel.
“In their desperation, they seek to create an Israeli-Gaza-type situation using the Western Cape as their political salvo—a scenario in which African and Coloured people of the province would be treated as subhuman in the land of their birth. This is the reason behind their insistence on Cape Town’s port being concede —an attempt to carve out an economic enclave where the interests of the privileged are protected at the expense of the majority. They have further demanded changes to labour laws that would allow employers to fire workers at will, without due process or legal recourse, effectively returning the country to the draconian conditions that allowed apartheid to thrive on the exploitation of black workers,” he said.
The DA has been advocating for the so-called ‘trickle down economics’ which essentially means reduced taxes with the hope that as capital makes more money some of it will flow to the poor and Mbalula said that is just cover for keeping the black majority living in slave-like conditions.
“The DA’s demands expose their true intentions— they want labour laws to be scrapped so that employers can fire workers at will, they want black economic empowerment policies to be abandoned, and they want to weaken institutions that have been established to reverse economic exclusion. These are the same policies that entrenched inequality and racial capitalism in the past, and the ANC will never allow such regression. Their opposition to the VAT increase is not about protecting the poor; it is about ensuring that economic policies serve corporate interests at the expense of working-class South Africans,” said a frustrated Mbalula.
Ironically Mbalula said the treasury only consulted the DA and the ANC on the budget and none of the other parties. He said the ANC remains committed to negotiating with any other party that has suggestions warning that not adapting a budget would spell disaster for South Africa.