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Blade Nzimande. (Photo: SACP via Twitter)
- South Africa’s stimulus package is simply the reorganization of existing budgets by defunding other government programs, says SACP Secretary General Blade Nzimande.
- He claimed that there were forces within the National Treasury and the Reserve Bank of South Africa that clung firmly to discredited neoliberal-style fundamentalism.
- Nzimande also said the SACP feared that the excellent ideas of the country’s economic recovery plan would not materialize or hampered for fiscal austerity.
The SACP criticized the National Treasury and accused it of hindering addressing the systemic characteristics that sustained the country’s corruption pandemic.
SACP Secretary General Blade Nzimande said there were forces still clinging to an increasingly discredited neoliberal-style fundamentalism within the National Treasury and the Reserve Bank of South Africa.
“In court documents, the National Treasury has even said that it would be ‘immoral’ to respect the government’s public sector wage agreement. Amid the Covid-19 pandemic and enormous economic and social distress, South Africa Reserve Bank is It has prepared to inject significant liquidity into the private banking oligopoly, but has refused to provide a liquidity boost to public financial institutions such as DBSA. [Development Bank of Southern Africa] and IDC [Industrial Development Corporation of SA]. “
Nzimande said that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s well-intentioned stimulus package was hardly a stimulus at all, but it largely represented the readjustment of existing budgets by defunding many existing government programs, thanks to the National Treasury.
“While the SACP commends the consultative approach taken by President Ramaphosa, particularly through Nedlac, in preparing an economic recovery plan, we fear that many excellent ideas ranging from a Universal Basic Income Guarantee, a major infrastructure program social and economic, until a massive expansion of public employment programs, will not take off, or will be so limited by fiscal austerity, that they will not have the necessary strategic transformative impact, “he said.
‘Support Ramaphosa’
Unlike its alliance partners in Cosatu, the SACP said Ramaphosa should not be blamed for the snail’s pace in the war on corruption.
Nzimande said Ramaphosa had put his own reputation on the line in the fight against corruption.
“We can’t just leave it to the president. The fact that we now have a president [who] It has come to light and NEC is clear, it should be a wake-up call for us as allies and South Africa, to tell us, let’s all stand up and don’t throw stones at each other. Let’s not throw stones, let’s mobilize to support the president, ”he said.
Cosatu criticized Ramaphosa for being “averse to confrontation” in the war against corruption within the ranks of the ANC.
READ | Corruption: ANC parliamentary group fights to mount a defense
His general secretary, Bheki Ntshalintshali, said that while he welcomed Ramaphosa’s rejection of corruption, he could only judge the results and not the intentions.
He added that aggressive prosecution was the only reliable vaccine to cure the corruption virus, not speeches, letters or public proclamations.
“President Ramaphosa will not win the fight against corruption if he remains averse to confrontation; he needs to start wielding a great ax if he wants workers to trust and believe in him.”
“Half the purpose of the criminal justice system is deterrence, so law enforcement agencies must target corrupt CEOs, senior managers, and politicians and send them to prison.
READ | ‘History will absolve me’ – Ramaphosa on the fight against corruption
“Ramaphosa needs to know that the workers remember his brave new frontier speech during his campaign for the presidency and those are the standards by which it is measured. The workers feel that the president who campaigned in poetry is ruling in prose and they are not impressed. The president should stop negotiating with criminals and use the only language they will understand, which is prosecution and imprisonment, “said Ntshalintshali.
This was the first time that Cosatu showed signs of a lack of trust in Ramaphosa since he was elected president of the ANC.
The union federation was his strongest ally in his campaign for the party presidency that led to the Nasrec conference, a decisive milestone.
