By now, South Africans have witnessed 30 post-apartheid budgets. For much of that time, budget day has been a ritual more than a reckoning—an annual check-box exercise wrapped in suits, spreadsheets, and prosaic speeches in parliament. The ruling party tabled it, the ruling party passed it, and the country, with varying degrees of resignation, moved on.
But this year was different.
The 2025 budget did not glide through Parliament on autopilot. It stumbled, clashed, and nearly fell. It was passed not by a government, but by a a variety of parties scrambling for the numbers. The result—a contested VAT increase pushed through over the objections of the ANC’s own coalition partner the DA, with the support of the ever useful political dopes at ActionSA—marked more than just a new budget. It hopefully marked a turning point.
Not because it detrimentally raised taxes. But because, as Hermann Pretorius has said, it showed South Africans the consequences of their votes.
For the first time in decades, the national budget wasn’t a foregone conclusion. It became something far more interesting: a mirror for South Africa. One that reflects not only the balance of power in Parliament, but hopefully the shifting consciousness of a public beginning to understand its own agency.
And in that mirror, the ANC may not like what it sees.
A Government of National Disunity
The 2025 Budget could have been the defining test of the Government of National Unity’s (GNU) promise, cooperation over coercion, shared governance over one-party dominance. Instead, it revealed what many of us knew all along—the ANC has not yet internalised the fundamental truth of this new political era, that it no longer governs alone.
By pushing through a VAT increase without the support of the DA, the ANC exposed both its isolation and its instinct, when backed into a corner, it does not negotiate, it still tries to dictate. This wasn’t the act of a confident party governing from consensus. It was a siege vote, with the ANC leaning on smaller parties, like ActionSA and its procedural ignorance, to bypass its own main coalition partner.
For the first time in a generation, the average South African might hopefully see the link between their vote and the policies that follow. For decades, the ANC dominated to such an extent that budgets were ritual, not politics. They happened. They weren’t debated. This time, the VAT hike wasn’t inevitable. It was a political choice—a visible, traceable outcome of last year’s election results. Voters, in effect, chose this Parliament, which has now chosen this tax. Political accountability, at last, has teeth.
The DA, in opposing the increase and preparing a legal challenge, is carving out a compelling public narrative that there is an alternative. And it can be summed up in six deceptively simple words—lower taxes, more jobs, higher growth.
But slogans alone won’t cut it. Now the DA must produce and showcase evidence, not just press releases and policy PDFs, but real, human proof that their approach puts food on the table, shoes on children’s feet, and dignity in people’s lives as it does in the places it governs, not faultlessly but miles ahead of any other party in South Africa. If the DA exits the GNU over this budget, it must do so as the party of economic realism, not political convenience. But I doubt that this budget will mean the end of the GNU.
The Ideological Reckoning
So here we reach the deeper question—will South Africans reject the ANC merely as a party that failed, or as the steward of a failed ideology?
Because if ANC support simply migrates to the EFF, the MK Party, or other ideological step-siblings, then South Africans have understood nothing. We will have changed the driver, but kept the vehicle of statist control, racial essentialism, patronage disguised as empowerment. The core of the ANC’s ideology—its belief in central planning, redistribution over wealth creation, and identity over capability—has not delivered prosperity. It has delivered debt, decay, and division. The VAT increase is therefore not just a tax but it is a symptom of an exhausted ideological paradigm, running out of money, time, and the patience of the public.
It does seem the public is catching on. If the Social Research Foundation’s polling trajectory continues—and if Hermann Pretorius’ Public Presence Support Levels model is accurate—the ANC is on track to lose its status as the largest party by the next national and provincial elections. The question isn’t just can the ANC fall, but who will replace it—and with what vision and what plan?
Whenever I tell my wife’s godmother that these are interesting times, she, in her nearly eight decade wisdom, always replies the same way: “It’s always been interesting times in South Africa.” She’s not wrong. South African history seldom offers calm seas.
But even in a country accustomed to turbulence, the VAT vote stands out—not merely as a fiscal decision, but as a potential referendum on governance, ideology, and the shape of our future. In that moment, the lines sharpened. The ruling party stood alone, and the opposition was handed more than just a talking point—it was handed a defining issue.If the DA and others can seize the moment, they may yet turn VAT into a political metaphor. Voters Against Tax, Voters Against Theft or Voters Against Tyranny.
A symbol of resistance to economic mismanagement and political arrogance. A call against not just tax, but against the return of unilateralism but dressed in coalition clothing.
The ANC’s fall is inevitable. But what replaces it need not be accidental. The choice is still to be made. But as Jan Smuts famously said of South Africa in 1949, “still, the worst, like the best, never happens“.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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