ANC wants Presidency at centre of budget
The ANC wants the Presidency to be the “strategic centre of power” in the government, controlling policy direction and resource allocation.
This is according to its policy chief Jeff Radebe, who addressed the media on Sunday at the launch of the party’s policy discussion documents.
There is an intense battle under way in the government over the power of the Treasury to determine priorities for the allocation of resources. At the ANC’s January lekgotla, President Jacob Zuma complained that the Treasury was an obstacle to its radical economic transformation agenda.
The discussion documents will be distributed to party structures and refined at an ANC policy conference in June. Final decisions on policy will be taken at the party’s national elective conference in December.
Radebe said there was a proposal for “the Presidency to be strengthened as the strategic centre of power in the state”, to drive the National Development Plan (NDP), policy, resource allocation and enforcement.
He said there were no plans
for the role of the National Planning Commission to change — it would continue in an advisory capacity — but the NDP could not be discussed without talking about required budgets. “If you do this, the NDP will remain an illusion,” Radebe said.
He said budget reform had been under discussion since 2016. There is a proposal for the Presidency to compile a “mandating paper”, containing the main priorities for the budget. Treasury would then “do the actual allocation of budget”.
Radebe said there were teams involving the Department of Planning and Monitoring and the Treasury that were driving this process. The discussion documents propose that the Presidency should also align the public service to deliver the core priorities of the state and that it should be at the centre of co-ordinating other spheres of government and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
The ANC admits that the challenge of weak leadership — both executive and nonexecutive board members — was persistent at state companies. It said allegations of corruption at SOEs were “on the rise”.
It proposed setting up “protocols” for oversight by Parliament and provincial legislatures for SOEs. It also recommended that legislatures play a role in rooting out corruption through paying attention to the reports of the auditor-general.
The governing party also proposed that SOEs be “compelled” to report corruption to law enforcement agencies.
There is no mention of land expropriation without compensation in the ANC’s policy documents on land — a call recently made by Zuma. Economic transformation sub-committee chairman Enoch Godongwana said tax proposals should be attached to the land question.
The land issue and the ANC’s economic transformation proposals, which are largely centred on the NDP, will be contested at the policy conference by a populist faction of the party linked to Zuma.