ANA reports that the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) said on Tuesday that it was expecting “business as usual” from Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba’s mini-budget and added that he was part of the country’s economic problems.  

Gigaba, who took over the reins at the National Treasury following the controversial firing of Pravin Gordhan in April, will deliver his first Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) in Parliament on Wednesday.  It is said that he will have his work cut out as he sets out the fiscal policy objectives and spending priorities over the three-year expenditure period.  Saying that there would be assurances to rich investors that their money would be safe with him while the poor would be left even further behind, Saftu added that it was confident that Gigaba would be exposed as a fake.  “He may use a few ‘radical’ phrases and lament South Africa’s sad ‘legacy of left-behind people’, as he recently called the poor, but his policy will be just a new bottle for the same old rancid wine of World Bank-inspired neoliberalism.”

• Read this report in full at The Citizen
• Read Saftu’s press statement at Saftu online

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