Parliament, the Budget and Poverty in South Africa

Effective and transparent government budgeting is vital to any democracy. In South Africa, massive poverty, inequality and unemployment remain, despite the successful political transformation. Citizens and Parliament have a particularly important role to play in shaping budget policy and overseeing its implementation. South Africa reached a crossroads in fiscal governance when it passed the Money Bills Amendment Act in 2009, a law which granted Parliament strong powers to amend the budget prepared by the executive. This title explores the content of the new law as well as the challenges and opportunities arising from it. It also discusses the role of Parliament in ensuring pro-poor budgeting. Good fiscal governance is too important for the wellbeing of South Africans to not be a part of our public conversations. This title focuses on Parliament's new budgetary amendment powers, its oversight role, and its ability to alleviate poverty through the budget. Given the formal powers assigned to Parliament, it clearly can play a significant role in ensuring that fiscal policy embodies appropriate trade-offs between sustainability and addressing urgent challenges, that allocations mirror social preferences and represent an appropriate targeting of the poor and other vulnerable groups, and that allocations are spent with a minimum of waste. Where these requirements are not met Parliament must intervene. As is discussed throughout this book, however, Parliamentary intervention needs to meet a number of criteria if, in fact, it is to improve budgetary outcomes.