
Top 10 stories of the day: Budget 3.0 date confirmed
News today includes Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana confirming that a new national budget will be presented in parliament on 21 May.
Meanwhile, Advocate Dali Mpofu has dismissed the misconduct charges against him as 'nonsensical' following the postponement of his disciplinary inquiry before the Legal Practice Council.
Furthermore, Afrikaans TV content sees a decline while state broadcaster SABC struggles to pay for the productions.
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Budget 3.0 to be tabled on 21 May — Godongwana confirms
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has confirmed that a new national budget will be presented in parliament on 21 May.
The decision to introduce a revised budget comes in the wake of government's move to abandon the plan by the National Treasury to increase the value-added tax (VAT).
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana. Picture: Gallo Images/Die Burger/Jaco Marais
The original proposal aimed to raise VAT by 0.5% starting on 1 May 2025, followed by an additional 0.5% hike in the 2026/2027 financial year.
The plan was intended to bolster government revenue, but it faced significant public and political resistance due to concerns over the potential impact on the cost of living and economic inequality.
CONTINUE READING: Budget 3.0 to be tabled on 21 May — Godongwana confirms
'They should be embarrassed': Mpofu slams charges as disciplinary hearing postponed
Advocate Dali Mpofu has dismissed the misconduct charges against him as 'nonsensical' following the postponement of his disciplinary inquiry before the Legal Practice Council (LPC).
The legal practitioner was scheduled to appear on Wednesday before an independent disciplinary committee at the LPC's offices in Pretoria.
Advocate Dali Mpofu at the Pietermaritzburg High Court on 20 March 2024. Picture: Gallo Images/Darren Stewart
Mpofu faced seven charges of misconduct, including matters involving former public protector Thuli Madonsela and Chief Justice Mandisa Maya.
Speaking to the media after the postponement, Mpofu described the inquiry as 'a mighty waste of our time'.
CONTINUE READING: 'They should be embarrassed': Mpofu slams charges as disciplinary hearing postponed
Afrikaans TV content dwindles amid SABC cash crunch
State broadcaster SABC doesn't seem to have a vendetta against the Afrikaans language – but is so broke it cannot pay for the productions.
One of the Afrikaans shows, Voetspore, could soon face the axe.
One of SABC's Afrikaans shows, Voetspore, could soon face the axe. Picture: Supplied.
Earlier this month, Afrikaners saw red when the SABC failed to broadcast the Afrikaans news on the first weekend of the month due to technical issues.
CONTINUE READING: Afrikaans TV content dwindles amid SABC cash crunch
Ramaphosa launches commission of inquiry into apartheid-era justice delays
President Cyril Ramaphosa is establishing a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate attempts to prevent the investigation or prosecution of apartheid-era crimes referred by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
The commission will probe allegations of improper influence in delaying or hindering the investigation and prosecution of crimes referred by the TRC to the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).
President Cyril Ramaphosa. Picture: Nigel Sibanda
'Allegations of improper influence in delaying or hindering the investigation and prosecution of apartheid-era crimes have persisted from previous administrations,' the Presidency said in a statement on Wednesday.
CONTINUE READING: Ramaphosa launches commission of inquiry into apartheid-era justice delays
2025 budget: Godongwana refuses to resign as Mbalula warns against another 'weekend special'
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has made it clear he has no plans to step down, despite mounting pressure and calls for his resignation following the 2025 budget impasse.
Godongwana announced at a media briefing on Wednesday that a third revised budget will be tabled in Parliament on 21 May.
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana tables 2025 Budget Speech at the Nieuwmeester Dome in Cape Town on 12 March. Picture: X / @ParliamentofRSA
This follows a court ruling that reversed the recently proposed value-added tax (VAT) increase.
CONTINUE READING: 2025 budget: Godongwana refuses to resign as Mbalula warns against another 'weekend special'
Here are five more stories of the day:
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IOL News
17 hours ago
- IOL News
Jeffery's Red Scare: The NDR, Manufactured Panic, and the Defence of Racial Capital
Anthea Jeffery warns of a covert socialist agenda in South Africa, framing the National Democratic Revolution as a Marxist threat. This article critically examines her claims, revealing the ideological warfare at play and the implications for democracy and capitalism. Image: IOL Anthea Jeffery has spent much of her career warning that South Africa is on a covert march to socialism. Her vehicle of choice is the so-called National Democratic Revolution — a theoretical construct she treats as hard evidence of an unfolding Marxist programme hidden inside government policy. The ANC's reform proposals, however diluted, are presented as proof of a long-haul conspiracy to unravel capitalism, property rights, and democracy. This isn't analysis. It's ideological warfare crafted for a constituency anxious about redistribution. The National Democratic Revolution in its original conception was a phase-based process towards liberation: political rights first, economic reorganisation later. But what Jeffery refuses to acknowledge is that the ANC never implemented its second phase. The so-called revolution halted at the moment of elite pacting. The language remained. The politics shifted. The ANC's alignment with the SACP and COSATU allowed it to maintain liberation credentials, while its actual policies became increasingly orthodox. By the mid-1990s, the alliance had internalised market logic. Redistribution gave way to stabilisation. GEAR formalised this. Privatisation followed. State entities were corporatised. Public services were costed and commodified. Jeffery omits this history. Or she wilfully misrepresents it. She uses the NDR as a container for all post-apartheid policy that inconveniences capital. Land reform, healthcare expansion, employment equity — these are treated as dangerous incursions into free enterprise. She isolates phrases from ANC conferences or SACP newsletters and holds them up as definitive proof of a creeping totalitarian project, while ignoring the decades-long collapse of anything resembling a radical economic agenda. Her institutional base — the Institute of Race Relations — supports this position through a stream of publications designed to conflate moderate state intervention with revolutionary intent. It claims to stand for classical liberalism. In practice, it operates as a cultural and economic firewall for the beneficiaries of apartheid's economic structure. Its function is not to analyse power, but to secure it. Jeffery's periodic references to 1976 are calculated. She acknowledges the significance of the uprising, but removes it from the insurgent currents that animated it. The student protests were not simply a spontaneous reaction to Afrikaans in schools. They were a political rupture. They revived Black Consciousness, anti-capitalist critique, and a pan-African worldview. Many students were detained, tortured, or killed. Others went into exile and carried their radicalism with them. Some joined the ANC. Others looked elsewhere — to the PAC, to newer formations, or to community organising beyond party structures. The UDF, which emerged in the 1980s, institutionalised much of this activism. But its formation marked a shift away from the militancy of 1976. It embraced the Freedom Charter and sought to build broad-based alliances under its framework. It functioned as a civic force rather than a revolutionary front. COSATU, too, while initially militant in worker organising, had by the mid-1980s begun engaging foreign donors and adopting development project language. USAID funding flowed into union education and policy platforms. The edges of resistance were being managed. The revolutionary demands were being absorbed into programmes. The SACP followed a similar trajectory. From its exile-era anti-capitalist declarations to its post-1994 parliamentary positions, the shift was clear. It offered ideological cover to the ANC's pragmatic manoeuvring, describing every compromise as a tactical delay. But the delays became permanent. The economic structure of apartheid remained intact, with new faces at the table. Jeffery does not mention these shifts, because her narrative relies on exaggeration. She needs the ANC to be a radical actor so she can frame even the mildest policy adjustment as evidence of Marxist capture. Her entire thesis depends on mischaracterisation. Redistribution becomes dispossession. Affirmative action becomes racial engineering. Healthcare equity becomes state control. She constructs an ANC that no longer exists and warns against an agenda that has already been abandoned. Her real objective is to delegitimise any challenge to racialised wealth. She is not defending democratic values. She is defending historical advantage. This is evident in the way she treats land. Expropriation without compensation, a policy with strict constitutional limits and very narrow application, is presented as the first step toward Zimbabwe-style collapse. This ignores decades of failed restitution, government inertia, and the market-driven nature of land policy since 1994. The threat, for Jeffery, lies not in the reality of land injustice, but in the idea that it might one day be resolved. AfriForum echoes this approach. Its spokespeople describe land reform as an attack on white farmers and frame any social policy as a threat to white survival. Their version is more racialised, more openly defensive, but the logic is aligned. Both formations reject historical responsibility. Both see equity as a threat. Both amplify fear to protect capital. Other institutions mirror these concerns in more bureaucratic language. Security think tanks publish briefings about instability. Business forums call for restraint. Liberal columnists urge balance. The message is consistent: do nothing that might disrupt the ownership patterns of the last century. Jeffery's argument about the NDR gives this position an intellectual cover. By citing speeches, strategy documents, and ideological jargon, she creates the appearance of serious critique. But it is a formula. She substitutes policy analysis with ideological projection. She avoids the fact that economic transformation has not taken place. She avoids the structural continuity between apartheid and post-apartheid capital. She avoids the reality that Black suffering in South Africa today is largely the result of state capitulation to business interests — interests that she and her institutional network continue to defend. There is no NDR in motion. There is a collapsed developmental state, a political class aligned with private capital, and a society in which poverty and violence have become structural conditions. The state has outsourced its duty to govern. The mines still poison water. The banks foreclose on homes built on land stolen a century ago. And the IRR tells us to be afraid of communism. The youth of 1976 would not recognise this landscape. They would not recognise the bureaucratised opposition that now speaks in their name. Their courage did not come with conditions. Their rejection of the apartheid order was rooted in the knowledge that legal inclusion without material justice is a performance. Their politics, forged in struggle and sharpened by violence, called for redistribution, for accountability, for dignity grounded in structural change. Jeffery does not engage this legacy. She instrumentalises it. She cites it when useful, silences it when it exposes her distortions. Her entire body of work is premised on protecting a system that never addressed the foundational crimes of this country. To suggest that the ANC, in its current form, represents a threat to private capital is absurd. It has managed capital's interests with discipline. It has sacrificed its own popular base to maintain investor credibility. Its ministers tour the world reassuring markets. Its budgets mirror austerity regimes elsewhere. It has enacted neoliberalism while speaking of revolution. The NDR functions now only as a symbolic reference. It is evoked at party conferences, in commemorative speeches, in SACP resolutions that never materialise. On the ground, it has no programme. What exists is a vacuum — filled by private sector partnerships, donor-driven governance, and a mass population structurally locked out. Jeffery chooses to see danger in the symbolism. She ignores the vacuum. She warns of an ideology whose time has passed, while legitimising the system that replaced it. Her contribution is not neutral. It fortifies the walls around wealth. It tells those who suffer to be patient — or to be silent. History did not vindicate the ANC. Nor did it vindicate the defenders of capital. It left the struggle incomplete. The question remains open — who will finish it, and how? Jeffery offers no answer. She only repeats the warnings of old men who saw equality as chaos. * Gillian Schutte is a well-known social justice and race-justice activist and public intellectual. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.

IOL News
19 hours ago
- IOL News
Germany advances South Africa's Just Energy Transition with R10bn loan
The National Treasury on Monday said this KFW loan, which forms part of the country's third Development Policy Operation, signified a continued commitment to structural reforms crucial for enhancing the efficiency, resilience, and sustainability of the country's infrastructure, particularly within the energy sector. Image: Supplied Germany has finalised a €500 million (around R10.4 billion) loan aimed at supporting South Africa's Just Energy Transition (JET) through the KFW Development Bank (KFW). The National Treasury on Monday said this KFW loan, which forms part of the country's third Development Policy Operation, signified a continued commitment to structural reforms crucial for enhancing the efficiency, resilience, and sustainability of the country's infrastructure, particularly within the energy sector. The loan agreement, signed in the presence of prominent stakeholders including the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, and the OPEC Fund, builds on two previous policy loans concluded in 2022 and 2023. Altogether, these initiatives represent Germany's pledge made at the COP26 summit to aid South Africa's Just Energy Transition Partnership, which is designed to combat climate change while supporting the country's socio-economic development. On Monday, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana underscored the significance of this partnership, pointing out that the collaboration with Germany and KFW was vital for advancing the nation's development agenda. Godongwana said this loan was a significant step towards strengthening short- and medium-term energy security measures, promoting decarbonisation, and ultimately realising inclusive economic growth through job creation for disadvantaged communities. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad loading He further emphasised the need for ongoing policy and institutional reforms in the energy sector, adding that he believed that creating an enabling environment was essential to attract the necessary investments for a successful and just energy transition. Echoing these sentiments, Cornelia Tittmann, KFW's country director for South Africa, expressed optimism about the potential impacts of the loan. Tittmann said this financial assistance sought to support the South African government's commitment to energy sector reforms, which will facilitate the country's climate obligations and engage the private sector, thus opening new avenues for economic cooperation between Germany and South Africa. KFW's financing, which totals €1.3bn over three policy loans, is a cornerstone of the broader efforts to implement structural reforms. These goals include strengthening public institutions, catalysing private investments, and improving service delivery across key sectors in the South African economy. Tittmann specifically acknowledged the leadership of the National Treasury in coordinating this operation, highlighting the strengths of a collaborative approach over the past four years. According to Treasury, the financial terms of the new loan are notably favourable, featuring a nominal value of €500m, with a maturity of 13 years and a three-year grace period, alongside a fixed interest rate of 4.31%. The KFW loan also comes after South Africa last week inked a 15-year, R8.4bn loan agreement with the African Development Bank in a bid to bolster its energy transition efforts. This financing is part of the third Development Policy Operation and comes with collaboration from key international players including the World Bank, KFW, Japan International Cooperation Agency, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Fund for International Development (OPEC Fund). In November 2024, Agence Française de Développement (AFD) also finalised a landmark R7.6bn loan to drive South Africa's Just Energy Transition Plan (JETP). This loan builds on the €300 million (R5.7bn) public policy loan provided in 2022, bringing France's total contribution to the JETP to €700m of the €1bn pledged at COP26 in Glasgow. BUSINESS REPORT


The Citizen
19 hours ago
- The Citizen
Hardware app with real-time stock, in-app checkout, a first for SA
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