John Matisonn: Budget impasse not over

Key topics:DA blocks ANC budget votes unless two controversial ministers are firedLegal opinion: full budget can't proceed without all departmental votesGNU dispute system still broken, fuelling coalition tensions and mistrust.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.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By John Matisonn.Parliament’s senior legal adviser, Adv. Frank Jenkins, has issued a legal opinion that indicates the battle between the DA and ANC to pass the budget is not over – the opinion says that the full budget cannot be voted on until each departmental budget has been passed.Since the Democratic Alliance (DA) has vowed to oppose the budget votes of two ANC ministers under a cloud, this means the ANC must find the votes without the DA, or the full budget cannot be presented to parliament. In an interview on Thursday afternoon, DA leader and Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen vowed that his party will oppose both budget votes until the ministers are fired. Asked what outcome he expected for the budget, he referred to the legal opinion that was received this week. It was up to the ANC to find the votes to reach a majority without the DA, he said. It is expected that the ANC will canvass for votes from other smaller parties, as it did when the first VAT crisis arose.Steenhuisen expressed frustration that a year into the GNU there is still no mechanism where he can bring disputes for resolution. That problem was kicked into high gear when President Cyril Ramaphosa fired DA deputy minister Andrew Whitfield for visiting the US without permission.“I’m unhappy about his firing, but there is nowhere for me to go to resolve the issue.”By firing Whitfield alone, the president had chosen to protect Human Settlements Minister Thembi Simelane for her alleged role in VBS looting, and Higher Education Minister Nobuhle Nkabane after she misled Parliament.“I can’t understand why Nkabane is protected when she lied to parliament, but firing Whitfield is a priority. Why is Whitfield’s the sackable offence?“If the ANC wants our support for those departmental budgets, they must replace the incumbent ministers with alternatives that meet the very standard the president has set for himself through Whitfield’s axing,” Steenhuisen said..Read more:.Minister Simelane under fire: R34bn housing budget defended amid fraud probe and political storm.He said the clearing house set up under Deputy President Paul Mashatile to resolve disputes still has no terms of reference. The original GNU agreement provided that disputes be resolved by consensus, and where there is no agreement, by a 60% vote, which would constitute sufficient consensus. That has not worked either. Asked what the budget impasse means for the survival of GNU, he said “It’s the same as it has been.” Steenhuisen stands by the view that Whitfield was not in violation of the ministerial handbook, which only requires that official visits be approved. But he said the underlying problem remained that a year into the GNU there is still not a workable dispute resolution mechanism.Asked about the impact of the DA’s withdrawal from the National Dialogue, he said it had not been properly handled and so it will not reconcile differences. The ANC had proved unable to “dialogue with their coalition partners”, so what sort of dialogue would it be? He said he asked the president for 24 hours to consult his party about the firing of Whitfield, and a few hours later his party members heard about it from the media. On the US trade deal, he said South Africa has provided a new version to Washington after the US requested changes, and awaits a reply. He assumes as long as that was the situation, SA could avoid the 30% tariff that may be imposed on countries that have failed to respond.

John Matisonn: Budget impasse not over

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