The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) rejects the continued enslavement of South Africa through endless foreign policy loans, following the announcement that the Government of South Africa has secured a new US$150 million development policy loan from the OPEC Fund for International Development.
This loan, which is linked to so-called “structural reforms” in energy and freight transport, represents yet another attempt by the National Treasury to mortgage the future of the country through debt arrangements that have neither a coherent industrial strategy nor a credible infrastructure development plan capable of transforming the productive capacity of the economy.
South Africa today faces an expanded unemployment crisis affecting more than 40% of the population because the National Treasury has surrendered the economy to neoliberal experiments, privatisation and austerity, while abandoning the developmental responsibilities of the state.
The EFF notes that the OPEC Fund loan follows a long list of policy loans secretly entered into with international financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, African Development Bank, New Development Bank and other foreign lenders, all under the false promise that debt-driven reforms would stabilise the economy and attract investment. Instead, these loans continue to lock South Africa into exploitative profiteering policies that undermine economic sovereignty, weaken state capacity and advance the privatisation of strategic state functions in energy, transport and logistics.
We maintain that the National Treasury has deliberately hidden behind technical language such as “structural reforms”, “fiscal consolidation” and “investor confidence” while ordinary people experience collapsing public infrastructure, deindustrialisation, unemployment, inequality and deepening poverty. The reality is that these policies continue to reproduce the apartheid economy and apartheid spatial planning where millions remain excluded from economic participation and trapped far from centres of opportunity.
Over the past five years, the National Treasury has repeatedly claimed that debt-to- GDP would stabilise, yet government debt continues to rise from crisis to crisis. Treasury now projects gross loan debt at over R6.1 trillion, while debt-service costs alone consume more than R420 billion annually, diverting resources away from healthcare, education, housing and economic development.
The incompetence of the National Treasury is reflected in its obsession with austerity, arbitrary expenditure ceilings and endless regulations that even government departments themselves routinely fail to comply with. Their only consistent achievement has been the destruction of state capacity, collapse of public services, rising municipal failures and suppression of economic growth through cuts in public expenditure.
The EFF maintains that the only sustainable solution is the amendment of the Public Finance Management Act through the EFF Private Member’s Bill currently before Parliament, which seeks to make it compulsory for Ministers of Finance to obtain parliamentary approval before committing South Africa to foreign policy loans and debt agreements with international financial institutions. No single Minister must be allowed to secretly mortgage the future of the country and surrender democratic sovereignty to external financial interests without the consent of Parliament and the people of South Africa. The EFF reiterates that South Africa will never resolve unemployment, inequality and poverty through debt dependency, privatisation and neoliberal austerity. What is required is a sovereign developmental state capable of driving industrialisation, infrastructure expansion, mass employment and economic transformation under democratic public control.
The EFF has faced legal challenges related to its protests and public demonstrations.
Moon Radar
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