GNU on rocks – Action SA hits “arrogant” DA, supports ANC in Budget

ActionSA last night put a spanner into the Government of National Unity works by breaking the impasse over the ANC proposed National Budget. The party's Parliamentary leader Athol Trollip spoke to BizNews this morning ahead of an early morning flight from Johannesburg. .Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here..If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Alec Hogg: I get all kinds of SMS's and I'm a very early riser. This morning I saw a rather strange one. It said that Action SA has joined with the ANC and sold out, sold out at the 1 % VAT hike. Athol Trollip is the parliamentary head of Action SA. Early morning start for you Athol and I'm sure a late evening as well. You're not a member of the Government of National Unity so I guess the impact that you can have on something like this is just enormous. Let's just start off though first. Have you voted for the ANC's budget?.Athol Trollip: No, we absolutely have not. Alec, let me just… You need to have some background here. And you can smile. But there's always a context in politics..Alec Hogg: Here we get an SMS (from the DA) to say, these guys have voted for the budget and now you say you haven't..Athol Trollip: Yeah, there's always context in politics. So let me give you my perspective. We are in this impasse precisely because the GNU could not come to an agreement about their budget. And as you said, we're not a member of the GNU. So the GNU is a big government, around 70%. And because they couldn't come together and fix a budget, we are now on this fiscal cliff that we're on. And that's the reality. There's a fiscal cliff..And ironically, over the weekend and over the last couple of days, the DA have been writing to the ANC backwards and forwards and saying they'll accept that increase on condition that they can have more influence in the government and that their role will be more prominent, etc. So they indicated that they were prepared to accept the increase on condition. We've done exactly the same thing. Except we have not put any conditions that are parochial. .We've said…This is a mess. We believe that the budget can be balanced with revenue that's already in the Fiscus. It just needs to fund different revenue streams and cut wasteful expenditure. There are a whole lot of that have been tabled in Parliament over the last five to six years, expenditure reviews of where the government is wastefully spending money. And we said if they just simply implement some of those reviews and go and look for additional revenue like with SARS..SARS collected a record amount of money last year and we got the minister to allocate more funding to SARS in this budget, additional four billion rand. And SARS believes that there's nearly 800 billion rand on the table to be collected of undeclared taxes and declared taxes. So we believe that this budget can be balanced and we've negotiated with the ANC to go back and.Parliament and the Finance Committee to find ways to fund the budget gap but not to increase VAT and not to have tax bracket creep. Now, Alec, what's interesting about this is that the DA says we've sold out because we've gone along with the ANC. Ironically, the DA said that they were going to save South Africa by joining the GNU. Now they're indicating they'll save South Africa by getting out of the GNU. So at some stage, people must understand that.Athol Trollip: It can't always be the DA way or the highway. And the ANC have spent the last 72 hours speaking to us non-stop, absolutely non-stop. We had the casting vote in that finance committee. There 11 members on there. The ANC has four votes. The IFP 2, the DA 2, MKP 2, EFF 1, and we have one..The DA have not spoken to us, not one word over the last week, certainly not over the last 72 hours. So they're so arrogant that they think they can go to a committee and just get their own way and if they don't, then they blame everybody else. They rolled the dice, they didn't win, they said to the ANC they would support the budget with the VAT increase on their conditions, the ANC said no, and now they're crying foul and calling everyone else traitors and sellouts. It's absolutely ridiculous. .Alec Hogg: Does this mean a reorganization of South African politics? In other words, you're not a member of the GNU. Are you going to join the GNU if the DA gets kicked out, et cetera? Just help us through your thinking on that one..Athol Trollip: We're not a member of the GNU. We didn't join the GNU in June last year for very good reasons. We said that we wanted to be a constructive opposition. We are playing that role right now as we showed in the committee yesterday. the DA are having a federal executive meeting this morning and I gather that they will be taking decisions about whether they will continue in the GNU or not. It will probably be untenable for them to do that, having voted against the fiscal framework yesterday..So it's unlikely that a party that votes against the fiscal framework will remain in the government that is to implement that fiscal framework. But that's up to the DA. Then if the DA does pull out, then the ANC will have to look for other political parties to support their government, because then essentially we won't have a government. And today in parliament, other political parties that aren't represented in the finance committee will also be voting one way or another. .I think it's going to be very important day for South Africa. .What we can't have is we can't have a situation where the DA is always the knight in shining armor, always promising that they'll fix things. And if they can't get their own way, they pull out and blame anybody else. We have made a very conditional recommendation to the fiscal framework and we've said that we support the fiscal framework on condition that over the next 30 days Treasury and Parliament and the Finance Minister go and find additional ways to fund this budget. It's only a deficit of 28 billion rand out of a two trillion rand budget. Now if you just cut some costs and I said right at the outset when the first budget effort was aborted that the government must just cut the fat and leave that and that is still our position..Athol Trollip: Cut the fat, leave the VAT, fund SARS properly, which they now have, and SARS can go after that money that is not being paid. And SARS have shown that they are very good collector of revenue. They collect the lion's share of revenue in this budget, nearly 1.8 trillion rand they collected last year. So, you know, what's R28 billion? It can be fixed. It can be found. And this is a pragmatic solution to a fiscal impasse that has come about because the GNU cannot find themselves..The DA won't negotiate with anyone. The DA believes that they hold all the cards. Well, you know, in this case they didn't hold all the cards. They didn't even deign it necessary to speak to the political party that held the balance of power in the Finance Committee. Now the ANC on other hand spent three days talking to us. I mean in the last four nights I've been to bed, you know, after one o'clock every single night with people phoning making recommendations, asking for our commitment, asking for our understanding, and the DA does nothing. Doesn't phone anyone, doesn't talk to anybody, and then cries foul and sends SMS's to the whole of South Africa blaming everybody else for the fact that we are in a fiscal impasse because the DA and the ANC couldn't find themselves..Alec Hogg: Just explain that fiscal cliff, Athol, the way you understand it..Athol Trollip: Okay, we have a fiscal impasse because the budget first was aborted when Enoch Godangwana came with a 2 % proposal of a VAT hike, which was ridiculous. And so the budget was aborted and two and a half weeks later he came back with another attempt and he'd already shaved off 1.5 % of that 2 % increase. So we believe you can shave off the other half a percent quite easily if you just apply your mind and change your bad habits and improve expenditure and get revenue collection sorted out through SARS..So that's the fiscal impasse that we're in, is that we're about to consider the passage of the budget. Now, just for the listeners' interest, today we won't be passing the budget. There are a whole lot of steps in the budget process. The Division of Revenue Act will only be passed in June. And we've said to the ANC, go and fund the funding. We believe it is there. We've given them a whole list of areas where they can find that funny and we've given them a month to do that. Now if they don't do that in the next month, we can always not vote for the budget when it comes to the division of revenue and then the ANC will be in a problem again. So we're basically saying to the ANC, look, you've been in government for a long time, you control the reins of government because you are the biggest party there, go and fix this mess and if you can't fix it with the DA, we're prepared to give you support to fix it. We are being pragmatic..We're being the constructive opposition and then let's see what can be done. But simply saying we're not going to vote for the budget and we'll bring everything to a standstill. Alec, you understand better than most that if this was aborted again, what kind of ripple effect that that would have in the economy and on the international stage if South Africa could not pass the fiscal framework, could not pass their budget, it would have horrific consequences for a country that's already teetering on the abyss..So really Alec, we had to come up with a pragmatic plan. That's the plan that we've come up with. We've to the ANC, go and find the additional funding. I hope that they will honour that commitment. And if they don't, we have a mechanism to vote against the budget ultimately..Alec Hogg: So the DA overplayed its hand?.Athol Trollip: I believe the DA overplayed its hand. saw a headline this morning to say the DA played its cards and got a bloody nose. And now there's this desperate attempt of sending everyone propaganda messages on their cell phones. People will eventually see through that..Read also:.Budget Impasse – Dr Mark Burke on not negotiables, why DA holding no-VAT line🔒 SA to launch state-owned firm to manage R8.4bn of state property, attract investment🔒 ArcelorMittal SA secures R1.68bn lifeline, delays steel mill closures

GNU on rocks – Action SA hits “arrogant” DA, supports ANC in Budget

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