ActionSA Betrayed South Africa by Supporting a VAT Increase

The speech below was delivered by the DA Finance Spokesperson Dr. Mark Burke during a debate in Parliament on the 2025 Budget:

Madam Speaker,

It’s significant that this report was considered yesterday in committee, on the first of April. A farcical day for a farcical process leading to a farcical report. Yet it’s a report that sadly isn’t an April fools joke – a report where our people are the victims.

Madam Speaker, this house generates great stacks of reports, minutes of committee meetings and agendas which fill archives, servers and libraries. Much of it meaningless, expensive paper, full of nothings that change very little for our people. A waste of paper.

But every now and then, parliament has the ability to take regular A4 paper and give it remarkable powers. To change lives with laws, to table budgets and thanks to the powers the Constitution and Money Bills Act gives us, to amend bad budgets.

Yesterday, we had the chance and almost the numbers to use that power to do our Constitutional duty to protect South Africans from a bad budget. A budget that includes VAT increases, that doesn’t move the needle enough on jobs or economic growth and is anti-poor.

That chance was spectacularly squandered. ActionSA, the IFP and ANC voted on a version of a report, which only came into existence hours after the meeting concluded.

A report that does not amend the fiscal framework, that supports a bad budget. The very same bad VAT budget tabled on the 12th of March.

Now, sure, supporters of this April Fools day farce are very quick to point out that this report makes recommendations to relook at the tax increases. Madam Speaker, the archives are full of reports with ignored recommendations.

Ask the auditor general how delinquent ANC local governments across the country respond to their recommendations year after failed year.

Ask those who worked on the Zondo Commission what they think the effect of their recommendations have been. After all, the Zondo Commission detailed how the Honourable Joe Maswanganyi was complicit in State Capture, yet that Honourable member is here with us today, spoke just earlier, and chaired the farcical and procedurally flawed Finance Committee meeting yesterday.

Reports in the hands of an ANC-led government mean nothing. Madam Speaker, we squandered an opportunity to protect South Africans from VAT yesterday.

Rather, let me be specific: ActionSA took the votes it received from market-minded, center-right South Africans and sold them out in order to support a framework for what? Five minutes of media coverage? Promises of future cabinet positions? Certainly not to stop taxes, because those tax increases are still very much baked into this fiscal framework that ActionSA chose not to amend.

ActionSA has said it’s in parliament to be a constructive opposition. Yet it’s only significant achievement so far is to support a report enabling an ANC anti-poor, anti-growth, anti-jobs VAT budget.

There are only two rational explanations for what ActionSA and the IFP chose to do yesterday. Either they were the April Fools: They genuinely thought they were changing the budget with their filmsy pointless recommendations and didn’t come to that committee with even a basic understanding of the Money Bills Act. Or these parties knew exactly what they were doing and were trying to make South Africans the victims. Selling us out by voting through an ANC VAT budget with flimsy recommendations.

Either way, it’s treachery.

The DA knew what it was doing and is very clear and consistent in its intentions both yesterday and during the entire course of this 7th Parliament.

We joined this GNU government to drive the growth and jobs agenda, not to enable the worst parts of the ANC. For that, it has to turn to ActionSA. If we’re forced to exit this government for driving a growth and jobs agenda, then so be it.

I will say one thing about all the paper that parliament generates, Madam Speaker: even the reports and motions that achieve nothing record our deeds or misdeeds, What will they record now?

Today, you honourable members have the same opportunity ActionSA and the IFP had yesterday and squandered for political points. You can choose to vote for a report that keeps the fiscal framework as is, that enshrines tax increases, enshrines bad economic policy and supports the anti-poor, anti-growth and anti-jobs ANC budget.

Or you can join parities in opposing this increase. As the DA, we will remain on our course of growth and jobs and vote firmly against this farce of a report. We reject it and we’ll see you on the battlefield. It’s not worth the paper it is printed on.