SA Budget 2025 will have full support of all GNU parties – Presidency

As Budget 2025 negotiations go down to the wire, Presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya told Daily Maverick: “There are consultations under way with all parties concerned and we remain confident that a budget that will be presented on Wednesday will have the full support of all GNU [Government of National Unity] parties.” 

He said President Cyril Ramaphosa and DA leader John Steenhuisen had spoken on Monday morning to come to an agreement. As talks among parties hit a logjam with two days to go before the Budget tabling on Wednesday, March 12, Magwenya said high-level talks would continue. 

While the DA has set its face against tax increases and instead wants spending cuts, the Budget Review of February shows that the upper-four household quartiles pay the most VAT because they consume the most. 



At the weekend, the Sunday Times reported that Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana stood firm for a VAT hike, though at a level much reduced from the 2 percentage points hike which saw his first spending plans torpedoed in February.  

On Monday, a different opposition party official said: “The DA does not support what’s on the table. There are ongoing discussions about what we could consider acceptable. The general view is that we do not want to see any tax increases.” 

Treasury officials who are in charge of the national balance sheet oppose shifting the fiscal plan too far out of the agreed medium-term expenditure framework, but in a GNU the framework should be up for negotiation, said an aide from a party to the power-sharing agreement.  

“The ANC’s tactics are to weaponise time – set a deadline and run down the clock in order to get their way. The difference this time is that they need Parliament and DA votes to approve something [the Budget], so their tactics are now high stakes and unnecessary brinkmanship.”

In a separate interview for a Daily Maverick podcast, the DA federal council chairperson Helen Zille said the GNU was sustaining itself 269 days after it had been inked. She said that the ANC and also the DA were finding that neither could get everything they wanted in various negotiations. DM