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BUDGET WILL FOSTER POVERTY

04/03/2019 01:51:00 By Vusi Sibisi

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THE Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) hit the bull’s eye when it termed Finance Minister Neal Rijkenberg’s maiden Budget Speech a book of lamentations ostensibly because it seeks to encumber the people with more taxes than being a source for solutions to the many challenges facing emaSwati.

While lamenting a missed opportunity to put the country on the straight and narrow in terms of checking and putting the brakes on reckless expenditure on vanity and senseless projects, the Budget Speech has served to confirm what this column has been saying all along. That is the source of the country’s myriad challenges is the Byzantine nature of the Tinkhundla political system that is militating against this country’s progress to live up to its medium income ranking by the United Nations (UN). Consequently new faces in Cabinet do not change anything in the way the country is governed as attested to by the budget.

As I see it, the budget presented last week is most likely to push more and more emaSwati into the poverty trap. Perhaps the leadership that be, is fond of always going out cap in hand looking for handouts from more successful countries across the world. That is the essence of wailing to the UN about the kingdom’s classification as a medium income country because it makes the job of begging for handouts on behalf of the impoverished people more odious.

his is at odds with vision 2022 and the attainment of First World status by that time. And the leadership ought to reflect on the following wise words by Confucius: “In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.” Evidently the Kingdom of Eswatini falls in the latter category - that is it is badly governed and the majority of the people living well below the international poverty datum line, which means they can hardly afford one decent meal a day. But is the leadership embarrassed by this, which is a manifestation of bad governance?

The answer is a firm no! Had real political power resided with the people it is a certainty that the country would not be in the sorry state it is in right now. In fact emaSwati would be living the dream where a majority of the people would be living within the medium income bracket where poverty would be a novelty since the wealth would be shared equitably instead of being monopolised by an elite minority.

But that will remain an elusive dream since the people have little or no say on critical issues of the State. Everything is dictated from top down, typical examples being the multi-billion Emalangeni vanity projects from which the leadership is benefitting from the supply chain downstream. Nowadays it is difficult to figure out if these projects are motivated by the financial benefits downstream other than a need since most of them are not economically viable.

Mismanagement

Now in the face of mismanagement of resources government has opted to burden the people with additional taxes. Winston Churchill had this to say on that score: “We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” What is even worse in our case is that the people have no say on how their taxes are spent. Forget Parliament since its very existence is to lend credibility to a flawed political system and its role is largely that of rubber stamping Executive decisions.

Why government continues to pour hundreds of millions of Emalangeni into the military when the leadership is wont to boast to anyone who cares to listen of the peace that supposedly has become synonymous with this country is befuddling. Perhaps this is an indirect acceptance on their part that the peace they are talking about is superficial and that the reality of the situation is that emaSwati are paralysed by fear for which the military machine is responsible. Otherwise the huge investments in the military would be better utilised to guarantee, among others, a functional health delivery system to save the lives of emaSwati who are daily extinguished prematurely because of insufficient medicines, drugs and personnel.

As for reducing corporate tax, this is meaningless since the spending power of emaSwati has declined drastically down to the basics. Government has directly contributed to the weakened spending power of the consumer by refusing to pay cost of living adjustments to civil servants for the past two years. Therefore the gesture of reducing corporate tax will neither spur economic growth nor attract new foreign direct investments (FDIs). The crux of the matter is that it is not taxes but the political system that frowns upon human rights and liberties that is chasing away FDIs.

Finally, one had expected a statement of intent from the Budget Speech to the effect that all national celebrations would be suspended until the economy shows signs of recovery.

But no, in the midst of grinding poverty scarce resources will, as usual, be wasted on expensive partying, which is normally preceded by shopping jaunts by those in the pound seats of the economy in some of the most expensive capitals in the world.

If truth be told this, the Kingdom of Eswatini, is a poor rich country in which the masses live in poverty street while the ruling elite lives the high life in extravagant street protected by a political system that was specifically designed to promote and protect a class-based social order typical in a fiefdom. Ultimately the proposed budget will foster and not eradicate poverty.