ANC cannot afford to fail in vaccine rollout

Finding the money to fund SA’s vaccine drive will take some smart political decision-making, and quickly.

While the Treasury will have to come up with the plan on how exactly to do this, as Business Day editor at large Carol Paton pointed out in an interview on Newzroom Afrika this week, the allocation of the budget is a political decision.

The most recent example of this was the decision to fund ailing state-owned airline SAA’s business rescue plan to the tune of R10.5bn.

The governing ANC came out of numerous meetings reiterating that the airline needed to be saved. The national executive committee (NEC), the party’s highest decision-making body between conferences, came out of a twoday meeting a year ago insisting that the national carrier remain a state asset, despite its uncertain future. It was also decided at the time that the cabinet should implement the operational processes needed to achieve this.

The cabinet took its cue from the ANC and moved to ensure that SAA received the money it needed for its rescue plan and, with a vision set out by public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan, form a new stateowned airline from the ashes of the old.

It persisted with this despite the Covid-19 pandemic taking hold last March, when SA went into a hard lockdown, battering an already weak economy and putting strain on the aviation sector as worldwide travel bans kicked in.

The coronavirus pandemic meant the budget needed to be reprioritised. It was because of this political decision that in his medium-term budget policy statement last year finance minister Tito Mboweni had to sign off a R10.5bn bailout for SAA, at the expense of funding earmarked for universities and institutions of justice, among other things.

This bailout was endorsed by the ANC and cabinet, and was given despite Mboweni’s personal opposition to further bailouts for the airline.

With SA scrambling to get its hands on enough vaccine doses to inoculate about 40-million people, the time has come to make some serious decisions.

The government was caught in a precarious position when it came to light that it missed deadlines last year for the prepayment of some vaccines, and that it had done next to nothing to negotiate with manufacturers to ensure SA gets the doses it needs at a fair price.

President Cyril Ramaphosa and his government have been on a media offensive in the past two weeks, trying to assure citizens that they are working on getting hold of vaccines.

But there has been little information on where the money will come from.

RAISING TAXES

When the president speaks about funding for the vaccines all he says is that money will not be an issue.

In the midst of this we have the Treasury considering raising taxes, which has raised the ire of many South Africans.

This comes as the ANC is set to hold its virtual lekgotla —a biannual meeting to discuss government priorities that will be attended by the party’s alliance partners, structures, and guests from business, civil society and traditional leaders. The meeting comes ahead of Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address in February, which will be followed by Mboweni’s budget.

The issues of the procurement of vaccines and the rollout strategy are expected to be top of the list at the meeting, which starts on Friday.

It is already clear that many NEC members, and the ANC’s alliance partners, are against the idea of raising taxes to fund the project.

The only other option is to reprioritise the budget, as was done when the governing party decided that SAA be saved. A big consideration around this will be the public sector wage bill, which weighs heavily on SA’s finances.

The ANC will have to persuade its alliance partners in organised labour that this is not the time to fight for major pay increases — this while unions and government have been bumping heads in court because of the state’s refusal to implement the final year settlement of the existing three-year wage agreement. This was upheld by a court last year, but is still being fought by the unions.

There will probably be heated debates over this issue, and exactly where the government can trim the so-called fat required to ensure it saves citizens’ lives.

A big driver for the ANC is 2021 is an election year, a time in which political gatherings remain banned under Covid-19 restrictions, so political parties need to rethink the way they campaign.

The ANC cannot afford to mess up the vaccine rollout project. Maybe this will be an incentive for it to roll up its sleeves and ensure that the government catches a wake up and does what is needed.