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- The finance minister must persuade their colleagues in Cabinet to stay the fiscal course.
- The best way to deal with public demands is not to ignore them - public buy-in is essential.
- In South Africa's case, the majority may not necessarily vote the ANC out of office, but who runs the ANC will likely change. The need for public buy-in will influence who this might be.
No other government department, bar the Presidency, straddles politics and economics as much as the Treasury. That derives from the role that the Treasury and its political head, the Minister of Finance, play in the budget process and the management of expenditure that goes with it.
Based on the groundwork by Treasury officials, the Minister of Finance advises Cabinet on what is affordable. Often, he has to curb the enthusiasm of his colleagues to dream big.
Arising out of this, a Treasury and its political head must keep an eye on what other government departments have up their sleeves because it has, or will have, implications for the budget and its management.
Navigating all of this isn't easy. It requires that the Minister of Finance persuade his Cabinet colleagues to stay the fiscal course. That's why a Minister of Finance ought to be the second-most-important member of the Cabinet after the president. The minister also needs the backing of his president, and this must be evident to all members of the Cabinet. In the British system, it has historically been the case that the most senior member of Cabinet after the prime minister, has been the chancellor of the exchequer. Not so in South Africa, largely because the ANC regards all and sundry as equal.
Given the current circumstances and difficult choices that need to be made, winning the public must surely rank as the second most important task of Treasury and its political head. Yet, it is tempting to put off public participation in the choices that have to be made. After all, involving the public in budgeting processes could prove challenging given the limited resources and the many demands the public would have. Secondly, it is easy for public officials to see public consultations as a great inconvenience when they have tight budget deadlines to meet.
But the best way to deal with public demands is not to ignore them. Public demands must be mediated through the relevant institutions, of which Parliament, warts and all, is one. Treasury has already been working with NGOs on the budget, but this must be scaled up urgently. Mediating public demands properly will, in the end, create greater public confidence and trust in the budget outcomes.
Pulling South Africa out of the difficult fiscal environment it has landed itself demands greater public confidence in what the government seeks to do. And that confidence can't be built on the basis of budget choices that ignore or dismiss public concerns, however poorly framed they may be.
A public buy-in is crucial if the country's debt is to be brought down to levels the government sees as more manageable. After all, South Africa landed on this fiscal cliff because of the choices the government made, none of which involved much public participation and consultation. In this regard, none of what has been done thus far is sufficient to meet the standard of proper public participation and consultation. Yes, Treasury publishes a lot of information on its website about the budget and associated expenditure. However, most of this information is not easily accessible to the broader public. This is largely a function of how the information is presented as well as the platform through which it is made available.
Only institutions with teams of economic analysts make use of the published budget information. The public only has to make do with whatever the media puts out.
So, given the pain and suffering that pulling the country off the fiscal cliff will entail, the public voice on how much pain and suffering it wants to bear must be heard. Secondly, if the poor are to take the pain they need to know why and to what end. In short, the public relations exercise of asking for tips a few weeks before the tabling of the budget in Parliament will no longer cut it.
Jeffrey Frieden, a professor of government at Harvard University, pointed out recently: "Policymakers in democratic societies must always pay attention to the next election – otherwise they are likely to cease being policymakers."
In South Africa's case, the majority may not necessarily vote the ANC out of office, but who runs the ANC will definitely change for the worse. The risk in this is that Ace Magashule may be your next president, and there's very little you can do about it. As Jacob Zuma was, he would have been chosen through electoral processes, the ANC's and the country's.
If the government fails to get the public buy-in for the pain and suffering that it wants to impose, especially on the poor, through the slashing of the budget, Magashule may turn out to be the political ace up the poor's sleeve. And we know, from his running of the Free State, what he stands for.
And that's why Frieden cautions: "It makes more sense to consider the political realities the government faces and to structure policy with those realities in mind. It is better to settle for second-best than to insist on first-best and end up worse – or, as folk wisdom has it, to let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
This may, perhaps, be the worst of times to open the budget process to the public, but not doing so means that the country will not pull back from the fiscal cliff.
Jabulani Sikhakhane is Deputy Editor of The Conversation. Views expressed are his own.
