Media Statements

The African National Congress (ANC) welcomes the 2025 Budget Proposal as a decisive intervention that prioritises job creation, economic growth, and service delivery while safeguarding the hard-won gains of our democracy. This budget is not just about figures and allocations; it is about the lived experiences of our people, addressing historical injustices, and ensuring that economic transformation remains at the centre of governance. It reaffirms the ANC’s unwavering commitment to eradicating poverty, reducing inequality, and building a better life for all, as outlined in the ANC Manifesto and the January 8th Statement.

As we mark and celebrate 70 years since the adoption of the Freedom Charter, the 2025 Budget Proposal embodies the fundamental principle that South Africa’s wealth must benefit all who live in it, not just a privileged few. It reflects the ANC’s progressive economic vision, ensuring that economic growth is inclusive, transformative, and people-centred. We remain firmly committed to building a developmental state that intervenes decisively in the economy to break the structural barriers of inequality, deepen industrialisation, and place South Africa on a sustainable growth trajectory.

The budget proposal is an important step in stabilising public finances while sustaining investments in infrastructure, industrialisation, and social protection. It directs 61 cents of every rand spent towards the social wage, reaffirming the ANC’s historic mission of advancing the interests of the working class and the poor. Education, healthcare, and social protection remain central pillars of government spending, ensuring that economic transformation is felt in the everyday lives of our people.

The proposed R100 billion investment in infrastructure will repair and expand roads, railways, and ports, strengthening South Africa’s industrial base while creating thousands of jobs. This aligns with the ANC’s long-standing commitment to integrating rural and township economies into the mainstream economy and dismantling apartheid spatial planning.

The ANC’s commitment to ensuring that economic growth is inclusive and sustainable finds expression in the expansion of the public transport infrastructure network, creating new economic opportunities for communities that were historically excluded from economic hubs. The revitalisation of our rail network and freight transport system will further lower the cost of doing business, improve market access, and ensure that industrialisation benefits all sectors of society.

The Presidential Employment Stimulus, which has already provided opportunities for hundreds of thousands of young South Africans, is set to receive an additional R15 billion, reinforcing our commitment to tackling unemployment and ensuring that young people are equipped with the skills and opportunities necessary to enter the formal economy.This intervention aligns with the ANC’s commitment to economic inclusion, recognising that a just transition requires deliberate investment in youth employment, training, and entrepreneurship. It is through these measures that we will ensure that young people are not spectators in the economy but active participants in shaping its future.

The ANC-led government has prioritised expanding the zero-rated VAT basket to cushion the poor from the rising cost of living. The expansion of this basket ensures that essential food items remain affordable, directly addressing food insecurity among the most vulnerable communities.

This intervention, combined with the above-inflation increase in social grants, represents the ANC’s unwavering commitment to protecting the working class and the poor from economic hardships. The National School Nutrition Programme has also been expanded to reach an additional 1.5 million learners, ensuring that no child goes to school hungry, because we recognise that proper nutrition is an essential component of effective learning and cognitive development.

The proposed VAT increase of 0.5 percentage points in each of the next two years, bringing VAT to 15.5% in 2025 and 16% in 2026/27, is a carefully measured intervention designed to sustain government revenue without disproportionately affecting the poor. The ANC recognises the concerns of working-class families, which is why mitigation measures—including an expanded zero-rated VAT basket, real increases in social grants, and fuel levy relief—have been prioritised. Unlike opposition parties that are fixated on elite interests, the ANC remains committed to pro-poor economic policies that protect vulnerable households while ensuring sustainable public finances.

The Budget continues to make bold investments in healthcare, ensuring that public healthcare is strengthened and expanded as part of the building blocks for the National Health Insurance (NHI). This includes the rollout of new hospitals and clinics, the provision of essential medicines, and the employment of 9,300 healthcare workers, including 800 post-community doctors. These measures reflect the ANC’s belief that access to quality healthcare must not be determined by financial means, but by the constitutional right to life and dignity. The NHI will fundamentally transform the healthcare system by ensuring that all South Africans, regardless of income level, have access to the best possible care without financial barriers.

Education remains the most powerful tool for breaking the cycle of poverty, and this budget significantly strengthens basic and higher education. The ANC has ensured that government will retain approximately 11,000 teachers in classrooms, preventing the deepening of the crisis of overcrowding in schools. The expansion of school infrastructure and the continued strengthening of the no-fee schooling system, which now benefits over 90% of learners, reaffirms the ANC’s commitment to universal access to quality education. The protection of NSFAS funding guarantees that students from working-class backgrounds will continue to access higher education, ensuring that no child is left behind due to financial constraints.

The ANC remains unwavering in its resolve to transform South Africa into a country that works for all, not just for the wealthy. This budget proposal is a step in that direction, ensuring that public spending remains redistributive, that economic transformation continues, and that government resources are used to uplift the most vulnerable. The ANC will not be deterred by those who wish to see South Africa return to the “good old days” of apartheid economic privilege. We remain committed to the people’s aspirations, and we will continue working towards a South Africa that is inclusive, just, and economically transformed.

As expected, the Democratic Alliance (DA) has once again revealed its anti-transformation agenda by opposing this progressive budget proposal. Their opposition is not based on concerns for fiscal responsibility but is instead a desperate attempt to undermine transformation, protect white monopoly capital, and roll back the democratic gainsmade over the past three decades. The DA seeks to use the budget process as leverage to renegotiate its role within the GNU, not because it has the interests of the people at heart, but because it is determined to advance an agenda that prioritises privilege over progress.

The DA’s demands expose their true intentions—they want labour laws to be scrapped so that employers can fire workers at will, they want black economic empowerment policies to be abandoned, and they want to weaken institutions that have been established to reverse economic exclusion. These are the same policies that entrenched inequality and racial capitalism in the past, and the ANC will never allow such regression. Their opposition to the VAT increase is not about protecting the poor; it is about ensuring that economic policies serve corporate interests at the expense of working-class South Africans.

In their desperation, they seek to create an Israeli-Gaza-type situation using the Western Cape as their political salvo—a scenario in which African and Coloured people of the province would be treated as subhuman in the land of their birth. This is the reason behind their insistence on Cape Town’s port being conceded—an attempt to carve out an economic enclave where the interests of the privileged are protected at the expense of the majority. They have further demanded changes to labour laws that would allow employers to fire workers at will, without due process or legal recourse, effectively returning the country to the draconian conditions that allowed apartheid to thrive on the exploitation of black workers.

The ANC remains firm in its resolve to build an inclusive and prosperous economy that works for all South Africans. This budget proposal provides a framework for investment, industrialisation, and economic transformation, ensuring that South Africa’s wealth is shared among its people. The ANC will continue to work tirelessly to advance the principles of the Freedom Charter, ensuring that the economy serves all, not just a privileged minority.

The people of South Africa can see through the DA’s deception.

The ANC stands firm in delivering a better life for all—driving growth, expanding opportunities, and ensuring that economic justice becomes a reality for all South Africans. The ANC remains the only political formation genuinely committed to transformation, economic justice, and the full realisation of the aspirations of the majority. The budget proposal is a step forward, and with the continued support of the people, we will ensure that it translates into real and tangible progress.

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