Government

ANC scores the biggest prize: South Africa’s budget

Seth Thorne

 ·8 Jul 2024

Despite South Africa’s foray into multi-party government, with ministers from various parties appointed to cabinet, control of the national budget remains squarely in the hands of the African National Congress (ANC).

Out of the 32 ministries in South Africa’s seventh administration, the ANC has regained control of the lion’s share of the departmental budgets.

This is seen in a recent analysis of the 2024/25 National Treasury Budget estimates for the various departments.

President Cyril Ramaphosa announced his multi-party Cabinet on 30 June 2024, with the seventh administration looking vastly different to previous ones.

The ANC, for the first time in the country’s democratic history, failed to secure an outright majority in the recent general elections by securing around 40% of the vote.

Thus, it needed to arrange co-governing agreements with other political parties to form a government, which it labelled the “Government of National Unity.”

This saw various political parties support Ramaphosa’s nomination for President in Parliament, and in return, they were to receive either positions in the Cabinet or executive or key appointments in the legislature.

After weeks of negotiations, Ramaphosa increased the country’s Cabinet size to 32 ministries, giving 20 to the ANC, six to the Democratic Alliance (DA), two to the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), one to the Patriotic Alliance (PA), one to the Freedom Front Plus (FF +), one to the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), and one to GOOD.

This excludes the appointment of the 43 deputy ministers, which comprise 33 ANC deputies, six from the DA, two from the IFP, one from the United Democratic Movement (UDM), and Al Jama-ah.

While other parties in the GNU did receive key portfolios with hefty departmental budgets—like that of Basic Education, Home Affairs, Public Works and Infrastructure and Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs—analysis shows that the ANC retained its stronghold on the country’s overall budget.

While ministers are heading the departments to serve South Africa as a whole and not appointed as ‘party ministers’, it is a fair assessment to group together the budgets of the departments allocated to the parties as these were undoubtably looked at when when the President allocated the positions.

The seven departments with the biggest budgets are that of Social Development, Cooperative Governance & Traditional Affairs (COGTA), Police, Higher Education, Transport, Health and Defence, with all except COGTA going to the ANC.

Based on information from the 2024/25 National Treasury Budget Review, it can be seen as:

• ANC – R808.82 billion;
• DA – R79.78 billion;
• IFP – R125.87 billion;
• FF+ – R27.76 billion;
• PAC – R16.71 billion;
• PA – R6.11 billion;
• GOOD – R2.38 billion.

Breakdown of the departmental budgets by party

Note – While National Treasury’s 2024/25 budget separates many of the budget allocations, how budgets will be split between new departments has not yet been determined. Below, we have indicated all departments that have been split and counted the total budget where possible.

For example, the budget already splits the budgets of Higher Education, Science and Technology – this split is reflected below. However, the split between Energy and Mineral Resources is not present, thus the two departments have been counted as one below.

Similarly, the split between the Department of Agriculture and Land Reform is not evident, thus the full budget has been counted for the DA and the PAC, respectively, until such time as the budget splits have been confirmed.

These caveats do not significantly shift the picture of the overall control of the budget.

African National Congress

Democratic Alliance

Inkatha Freedom Party

Freedom Front Plus

Pan Africanist Congress

Patriotic Alliance

GOOD

Read: Who controls what: How government has been split among the ANC, DA and other parties