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Eyewitness News
21-05-2025
- Business
- Eyewitness News
Budget 3.0: EFF won't support 'austerity' that cuts funding to critical depts
CAPE TOWN - The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) says it won't support an "austerity" that cuts any funding to critical departments like health and education. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana will deliver the national budget speech at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on Wednesday. With a value-added tax (VAT) hike no longer on the table, the minister is under pressure to fill a R75-billion budgetary gap over the next three years. The EFF caucus is in a defiant mood ahead of the budget speech. The red berets say its proposals of increasing the corporate tax and introducing a wealth and apartheid tax have not found favour with the African National Congress (ANC). EFF national spokesperson Sinawo Tambo says its clear the GNU's next course of action is to cut spending. 'We are going to do our work in the Standing Finance Committee and those who bare going to support an anti-poor budget that's going to cut teachers and nurses they are going to be exposed to South Africans because they said they oppose the VAT hike because they are for the poor let's see now when we get budget cuts where they stand.' Meanwhile, the two biggest parties in the GNU, the ANC and DA, say they have resolved their budget differences.
Eyewitness News
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Eyewitness News
POLITRICKING: EFF marks 12 years with growing pains as door to GNU remains closed
The door which leads to participation in the national coalition seemingly remains shut for the EFF, despite continued friction among coalition partners. The red berets have also made numerous attempts to engage with the ANC and made public declarations of a willingness to join the DA has argued its persistent presence in the GNU and relationship with the ANC - though becoming increasingly acrimonious - is aimed at saving South Africa from a 'doomsday coalition' between the former liberation movement its splinter, the is a narrative EFF member of parliament and national spokesperson Sinawo Tambo tells EWN's Politricking with Tshidi Madia, has been effective and still plays a role in keeping the red berets outside.'There's a narrative that an inclusion of the EFF in governance equals to constitutional or democratic collapse, or there's a threat to democracy, or could result in a doomsday,' said Tambo as he reflected on his party's journey since the 2024 May general watershed polls saw the reds moving from the third largest political organisation to fourth place, with its support in KwaZulu Natal decimated. Tambo said, their fate, like several other organisations was sealed by the arrival of former president Jacob Zuma's Umkhonto weSizwe party but added that campaigns like the DA's weren't countered sufficiently and have had some impact on how the EFF is perceived.'I don't think it's based on any verifiable fact now, but it's a narrative that was built up over a course of time, I think since the inception of the EFF, because of the policies that we represent,' he while deemed not fit enough to co-govern at national level, the EFF currently enjoys a relationship with the ANC across several metros, even in irony being in 2016, it joined hands with the very same DA warning South Africans against them, in a bid to destroy the ANC.'We did that to weaken the ANC, and it is weakened now to a point where it can't recover… to work with them now is convenient for the EFF,' he said.'It's a shift of politics and I don't think to remain at the trough, but now we're included in those local government municipalities as well, and we're able to effectively leverage our work in local government to prove to voters that the EFF is capable to govern,' he added. This is also a relationship that comes with its own tensions, Tambo himself, has accused the ANC of thinking it can lean on the EFF to come to the rescue when it's met with challenges in its partnership with the DA. The red berets mouthpiece said the ANC shouldn't presume it will always be on hand to support it, claiming the ANC has shown itself to be both manipulative and inconsistent in this regard.
