We must be part of economic life

With South Africa facing such a difficult economic period, we have to welcome the Budget Speech delivered by finance minister Tito Mboweni.

It was a very fair budget considering the constraints that we have to deal with. The budget spoke to the people of this country. However as expected, there are serious concerns in it.

Why is Eskom given the amount of R23bn a year in the next three years (R69bn) because this state-owned entity has shown that it is failing?

We have municipalities that owe Eskom and we have individual clients like the people of Soweto who owe this entity the amount of R17bn, and what is being done to collect the money due?

It is also worrying that the country is borrowing about R1.6bn a day with close to 50% interest. Clearly, this shows that we don’t have money as a country because even our GDP growth is not growing enough at 1.5%, and this means we are not producing.

It is also a confusion that in a country with a programme to expropriate land without compensation, we have a budget to buy land, what for?

However, we must welcome the fact that there are some serious interventions in the budget, particularly in education, health and the fact that we have R30bn set aside for building of schools and R2.8bn for a new human resources grant in the health sector. This is good but it will be great if this money is not looted.

As South Africans, we need to play a meaningful role in the economic life of this country even though some are not economically active.

We have been spectators for far too long now. All we have been doing is to complain all the time. We need to be part of this renewal and the new dawn that is here in the country.

Tom Mhlanga, Braamfontein