I recently wrote an article asking the question: . Can National Treasury Dictate Future Spending? Unpacking the Constitutional Court’s View | Constitutional Court Review

The ANC leadership just days ago wanted us to believe there is a viable risk of a coup threatening our democracy. Perhaps they were right - we just didn't realise it was the technocrats preparing the budget and planning to do away with the bother and expense of elections.

We can afford to run elections, build schools, and fulfill the promise of our Constitution. What we can't afford to do is liquidate the state and our democracy by persisting with austerity.

Austerity was always centrally concerned with self destructively damaging state capacity and has always been fundementally anti-democratic. Here, it just happens to be painfully obvious.

The spectre of Gaza is going to haunt all of us because we have failed them.

Far too much of the internal energy of the ANC is consumed by managing internal factionalism with deployments. Far too little time is being spent on self introspection about poor policy choices.

As always, the PMG team does an amazing and important job of creating space for everyone to understand and hopefully engage with Parliament. The budget process opened up just a little bit more this year, but there is a lot of room still for democratizing the budget process.

How can a political party name itself after MK and then actively support the colonial occupation of the Sahrawi Republic?. This is a fatal contradiction. Imagine if someone like Samora Machel had supported Bantustans as a 'solution' to the anti-Apartheid struggle.

The appointment of Buti Manamela is a great decision.

This is such an incredible betrayal.

It is hard not to get the impression that the current ANC leadership are unbothered by electoral decline and, perhaps worse, quite committed to losing elections going forward.

The SANDF is right to challenge the power assumed by Treasury to de facto determine the capacity of other departments to meet their obligations and mandate. Parliament actually should determine spending, and must start doing its job.

The next ANC elective conference must critically demonstrate efforts to rebuild internal democracy in the organisation and ultimately a commitment to implement policy resolutions. The current leadership is a mess, and its authority is dissipating as the GNU unravels.

The long-standing commitment of the SA gov to a form of job guarantee for lawyers remains in place. Perhaps we just need to expand this commission's mandate to employ thousands of people to build infrastructure under the umbrella of a policy to make us safer and more secure.

In every other corner of the gov - if you spend public money on the same thing twice, it's considered fruitless and wasteful expenditure by default.

We keep persisting with this litigious form of commission, which has consistently let us down (esp when duplicating gov functions). If looking into systemic issues, then a commission without quasi-court features would be useful. But corruption deserves to be prosecuted in court.

Agreed, the appointment of Prof Cachalia is an excellent decision.

Rassie was born to be a tax lawyer.

RT @CALS_ZA: This year’s Public Interest Law Gathering #PILG2025 takes place in October under the theme “Unfinished Freedom: Interrogating….

Absolutely critical point - budgeting at its heart should follow the principle that funding and mandates must be commensurate.

Of civil servant salaries was a clear crossing of the rubicon - the ANC did a massive dent to its image in the civil service. The civil service is likely to leak senior ANC leaders' skeletons more regularly going forward.