Provincial Budget Fails to Fund the Fundamentals

GOOD Statement by Brett Herron, Unite for Change Leadership Council Member & GOOD member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament:

As the Western Cape Provincial Budget was tabled today, it has become clear that the provincial government has once again failed to prioritise the fundamentals that actually shape people’s lives.

Ahead of the budget, we expressed cautious relief that the national fiscal framework was not as catastrophic as many had feared. But any relief at the national level has quickly been replaced by frustration at the provincial level.

This budget continues a deeply troubling pattern: increasing expenditure on functions that fall outside the province’s core mandate, while constitutionally shared responsibilities, such as housing, infrastructure, health, and education, remain under pressure.

The numbers speak for themselves.

The province has allocated R727 million in 2026/27 to safety, which is a 6.54% increase, despite policing being primarily a national competency.

At the same time, only R1.687 billion has been allocated to infrastructure, which is a 9.81% decrease in funding from the Provincial Equitable Share. Infrastructure is a core provincial responsibility that directly affects housing delivery, mobility, and economic opportunity.

This is not simply a budgeting choice. It is a question of priorities.

The lack of housing, public and affordable, is a continuing crisis that this government has failed to address.

When housing backlogs grow, when informal settlements expand without services, when learners sit in overcrowded classrooms, the responsibility does not lie somewhere else. It lies with the Provincial Government.

If the provincial government is serious about tackling crime, it must invest in what actually works.

Well-located, dignified housing reduces vulnerability and spatial exclusion. Reliable infrastructure connects people to jobs and economic opportunity. Quality public education expands life chances and breaks cycles of poverty.

Social investment is a safety policy.

Instead, this budget continues to pour money into highly visible safety programmes, with so little success that the army needs to be deployed where this Province has been adding boots to the ground for the past 6 years.

In the meantime, the structural drivers of inequality and instability remain underfunded.

Equally concerning is the province’s failure to meaningfully respond to the growing crisis of food insecurity.

Despite an improvement in the employment rate in the Western Cape, people are increasingly hungry. The increase in moderate food insecurity, at the same time as more jobs are apparently being created, is alarming. One would expect more jobs to mean less hunger. Instead, more than half of the Western Cape population is food insecure.

What kind of jobs are we creating if we have a growing social injustice of the working poor?

Yet this budget offers no serious intervention.

We would have expected to see much more funding for a provincial feeding scheme that extends beyond existing school nutrition programmes, recognising that hunger does not disappear once the school day ends.

Hunger undermines educational outcomes, damages public health, and destabilises communities. A government that ignores rising food insecurity is choosing to ignore the foundations of social well-being.

This budget had an opportunity to do things differently. It could have strengthened long-term social investment by protecting housing and infrastructure allocations, expanding support for public education, and confronting the growing crisis of food insecurity.

Instead, it largely maintains the status quo.

And for a province defined by deep spatial inequality, growing hunger, and persistent social challenges, the status quo is simply not good enough.

If we were to create a hierarchy of what deserves funding in this province, the base of that pyramid would be clear: housing, health, education, and food security. These are the foundations of dignity, opportunity and stability.

This budget, unfortunately, has chosen to fund the top of the pyramid while neglecting the base.

GOOD Ministerial Role: Patricia de Lille serves as the Minister of Tourism in the national government.

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