The failure of Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to inspire the nation when he presented his Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement last week is worrying and challenging.
It is worrying that he repeatedly suggested that austerity and privatisation were solutions to the country’s economic problems. There is little to inspire in his rehash of neo-liberal policies that put the country in its social and economic malaise ever since the ANC government discarded the Reconstruction and Development Programme and adopted the Growth, Employment and Redistribution programme in 1996.
In his speech, the minister spoke about “reconfiguring the structure and size of the state
