Buddy. 35% means 35% of people looking actively for jobs dont have one.
1. That doesnt include children, students and retired people
2. It doesnt include people that gave up looking for a job
3. Refugees, illegal immigrants etc.
In reality 70% of SA lives on Social Wellfare. Yip SASSA grants is a social wellfare fund for people that doesnt have pensions etc.
so 70% of our budget goes to social wellfare projects but even thats been looted, thus the NHI to offer them healthcare but at a tax adjustment of 5-10% for existing taxpayers.
Had to look it up now, because 70%-70%??? A bit hit and miss with the figures there. Not that our budget looks peachy at all. To put it lightly. Let alone the amount for social services. But there's worse problems in it than SASSA...
Finance minister Enoch Godongwana presents the 2023 national budget.
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- The 2022/2023 total budget was R2.24 Trillion. Of that R1.35 Trillion was allocated towards "social services" (60%).
- SASSA is paid out of and seems to make up >95% of the portion allocated for Social Development* (a sub-category of social services). R357.8bn. Somewhere around 16% of the total budget.
As mentioned social services, as a broad category, takes up 60% of the budget. However some social services are more, or less, sensible. Without a doubt though - If there was less unemployment among the employable, then the budget would be far prettier. Oh so much so! On the other hand so many people would probably just starve and die without SASSA. Many of them old and decrepit, or disabled, or are children and thus dependent. Which would just simply not be right. I'd say our government's salary bill (which takes up a portion of each and every category in the budget including SASSA - a large one at that) is the biggest problem.
The parts of the budget that have really been scary in recent history, and causing difficulty with all others is the budget balance (large deficits to a fault) and along with it a growing debt servicing expense. Which was allocated a somewhat scary R340.5bn. That's likely more than what was actually paid out in grants (total cost of SASSA is not all just payouts - A substantial portion of the SASSA expense is administrative...). And, there's a vicious circle in effect. Less and less money for vital national expenditure such as infrastructure development, security, etc. Things that by rights, if attended to strategically and responsibly, would grow the budget faster over time, and maybe lower debt servicing pain. Rather what happens is more and more going to debt servicing.
For example in the US, where many go nuts over government debt levels (in absolute terms) - Debt servicing is only around 6 or 7% of their total budget. Where for us it's 15%. In other words the US might have a metric **** ton of debt, but they have way less problems paying it back and keeping up with the interest.
And whatever anyway - It feels like the budget is often adjusted on the fly. With extra expenses cropping up. Like emergency bailouts for example. And then corruption and mismanagement continuously depresses the economy tremendously.
*
You might note that the numbers for 2023/24 social development in this article are not even close to the estimate from the 2022/23 budget document. Not sure why, but yeah - I sometimes think any and all national budget numbers are negotiable to our government rofl
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