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Government spending has stagnated since covid

Budgets are not keeping up with the growth in the population

We did the math: government’s spending on essential social services has barely recovered since the covid pandemic, and for some services, it is not keeping up with population growth.
We adjusted for inflation the government’s spending on education, social protection (mostly social grants), health, housing and defence, over the past 20 years. Here’s what we found:

Defence: spending on the army has slowly decreased from the 2025/26 equivalent of R72bn in 2005, to R54bn in 2025.
Housing: spending on human settlements increased significantly between 2005 and 2013 — from the equivalent of R75bn to R200bn. But then it stagnated and even decreased in some years. R196bn was spent on housing in 2025.
Health: Until the covid pandemic, spending on health…

Read More: Government spending has stagnated since covid.

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