CAPE TOWN - Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Mmusi Maimane said Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s 2019 budget was a “lipstick budget.
“Firstly, South Africa faces a very difficult stage now, what has become very clear is that instead of taking bold and decisive action on Eskom, we have allocated more bailouts,” Maimane said.
During his budget speech in Parliament on Wednesday, Mboweni announced that the troubled power utility Eskom will get an additional R69 billion from the state over the next three years to help it service its debt.
“Even though you can talk about education, the fact of the matter is that he’s taking money away from provinces whose competence is to deliver education. This was a lipstick budget, he made it look pretty on the outside but frankly, it’s dealt with nothing,” said Maimane.
He said South Africa needed a plan that would deliver jobs as the country was in a situation that needed “radical change”.
“It hasn’t changed anything, it had no economic plan. South Africans will still be without work. We need a plan that will deliver jobs and ultimately, I don't want us to debate whether we should hold on to SOEs or not, we should be selling them. We are in a situation that needs radical change and that budget was just more of the same,” he said.