Budget shows failing ANC 'forced to accept' new ideology

It is not surprising Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana sounded like a capitalist during his mini-budget speech, because the ANC has no choice but to embrace the private sector as its economic model has failed dismally.

- Eric Naki

"The ANC knows its own state-run apparatus has failed and it cannot be trusted ultimately with efficiently and ethically running the core of state functions," said political analyst Daniel Silke.

"So I think the party has been forced, kicking and screaming, to be much more pragmatic on its broader ideology.

"It knows it has limitations; it has been taught hard lessons of how its own mismanagement has led to the limitations now coming out to the state.

"There is no real attempt to go back to this kind of heavy-handed interventionist state ideology," Silke said.

Godongwana, a former general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, the most militant and Marxist-oriented union in the country, presented his most neo-capitalist mini-budget, making numerous budgetary cuts, including a plan to reduce the bloated civil service.