Labour federations Cosatu and the South African Federation of Trade Unions have led calls for a budget that addresses massive unemployment and weak growth

Now that a VAT increase has been ruled out, the finance minister must find another way to plug a R75bn gap or risk collapsing public services and investor confidence

Godongwana promises fiscal prudence in his new budget but the growth forecast may change

Budget approval hangs in the balance and resistance to it is set to play out in the legislature’s finance committees

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana forecast 1.8% growth over three years, coupled with a bigger deficit, as debt service costs crowd out fiscal space

Rodgers, the new finance MEC, said he would cut subsistence and travel by 25%. In the last financial year, under the ANC, R1 billion was spent on S&T

When he came in as president, he destroyed the old system but failed to build something new – and now Ruto is paying the price

The Kenyan government said it would reduce spending to compensate for the scrapped tax measures.

Earlier this year, the ratings agency warned that a significant increase in the government’s debt-to-GDP ratio could knock its credit rating

In this instalment of The Fiscal Cliff – a Mail & Guardian series on how South Africa’s budget has been shaped – Sarah Smit considers the intimate link between the country’s ultra-high unemployment rate and austerity

The minister underlined that in the wake of efforts to grow the economy, the government must respect budget constraint