Later this month the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, will present a budget against a backdrop of disappointment. The country’s economic growth rate this year is likely to be lower than previously expected, and the budget deficit and public debt will be higher as a share of GDP.
Pledging to resolve the ‘land question’ has been a perennial theme for the ANC. For the most part, this has been approached as a political rather than an economic or developmental question. Actual land reform – at least in its agrarian manifestation – has never been a priority, and its successes have been modest.
‘Under the Water Services Amendment Bill of 2023 (the Services Bill),’ notes the IRR, ‘the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) plans to appoint hundreds of new water cadres to license, monitor, and direct its existing water cadres – many of whom are clearly incompetent and unaccountable.’
‘Under the draft National Water Amendment Bill of 2023 (the Water Bill)’, says the IRR, ‘the government aims to transfer many of the water-use rights vital to commercial agriculture to emergent farmers lacking title to land, working capital, and a host of other vital inputs. The Bill is thus likely to curtail production, push up food prices, and terminate many thousands of farming jobs, even as it brings few gains to new farmers.’