South Africa's Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan. Photo: Michael Walker South Africa's Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan. Photo: Michael Walker
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has lashed out at opposition parties for turning the youth wage subsidy and the e-tolling into “political tools”.
Speaking during his annual budget vote debate in Parliament on Friday Gordhan accused the DA of being “bankrupt on economic policy” for focusing on politically hot issues while proposing “no solutions” to the country’s social and economic challenges.
“Don’t just pick on the youth wage subsidy as a convenient political tool. Don’t use it as a tool… What we really have (here) is politicking in this debate, where we conveniently look at Cosatu as the bogey organisation and start looking at manufacturing all sorts of things in order to generate political debate,” he said.
Gordhan was responding to criticism – particularly from the DA – over the government’s apparent inability to move ahead with the youth wage subsidy – for which R5 billion was set aside in the 2012 Budget – in the face of opposition from ANC alliance partner Cosatu.
DA MP Tim Harris said while former finance minister Trevor Manuel had had some of his policy ideas impeded, but got his way nine times out of 10, the current minister’s policies were being “politically railroaded by a rampant Cosatu”.
“It is a national tragedy that Cosatu’s cosy political arrangement with the ANC has torpedoed the one plan to tackle youth unemployment from national treasury that has broad support from the entire opposition, economists across the ideological spectrum and from South Africa’s second-largest trade union federation, Fedusa,” said Harris.
The wage subsidy issue exploded on to the streets of Johannesburg on Tuesday, when an apparently unsanctioned gathering of Cosatu members clashed violently with a legal march by DA supporters aimed at highlighting Cosatu’s opposition to a wage subsidy.
Referring to similar criticism over e-tolling, a visibly irritated Gordhan said: “Suddenly the truth doesn’t matter. What matters is how you score political points. What matters is how you smear coats of paint around corruption and all sorts of things in order to discredit something and opportunistically use a R20bn project as a political football.”
Gordhan suggested that instead of harping on the wage subsidy, the DA should instead help find solutions to the “real issues”, such as the fact that SA was facing a “one in 70 years recession”.
“The real issue in South Africa is: did we as the government manage our fiscus correctly in response to the recession? The answer is yes. Do we have a strategy for growth and inequality in the context of the recovery – not only from recession, but from 300 years of apartheid and colonialism. You (the DA) don’t have an answer (to these issues),” he said.
And responding to criticism over the government’s decision to challenge a court ruling which led to the temporary suspension of e-tolling in Gauteng, Gordhan said the state had every right – indeed the duty – to test “certain crucial legal issues” in court.
He also said the country faced “dangerous times” arising from “both the dismal situation in Europe and our own structure of economy and society”. - Saturday Star