South Africa\u2019s Democratic Alliance criticized the African National Congress\u2019s reluctance to share control of economic policy, escalating an impasse over the budget that\u2019s strained relations between the two biggest parties in the nation\u2019s coalition government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ANC on Friday balked at a proposal by the DA to share management of economic policy, news website News24 reported. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rejection of that plan risks leading to the collapse of the so-called government of national unity<\/strong>, it said, citing an unidentified DA negotiator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rand fell as much as 1.1% against the US currency and traded 0.8% weaker at 18.38 per dollar by 6:26 p.m. in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The DA entered a coalition with the ANC to \u201cgrow the economy and create jobs,\u201d DA leader John Steenhuisen said by text message from Paris when Bloomberg News sought comment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf we are unable to do so and the ANC want to lock us out of key decisions, we have no way to influence economic policy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ANC spokeswoman Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri wasn\u2019t immediately available when Bloomberg sought comment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A business-friendly coalition was established after last year\u2019s elections failed to produce an outright winner, but the ANC has angered the DA and some of its smaller rivals by unilaterally pushing through new education, health-insurance and land-expropriation laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tension between the ANC and the DA flared last month over a proposal by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to raise value-added tax by two percentage points. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Objections to that plan by the DA and others, including within the ANC, led the minister to propose increasing VAT by a single percentage point by mid-2026, though he\u2019s yet to secure lawmaker support for the revenue-raising measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first of a series of budget bills is scheduled to be presented to parliament next week, when lawmakers will begin debating its fiscal framework. The process of approving other budget bills is expected to continue through May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Godongwana has said he\u2019ll enlist support from a range of political parties to get the budget approved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Local media, such as Business Day, have speculated that the ANC may seek to bring the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters into the coalition government to secure passage of the budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf they want to do a deal with the EFF then they must reap the consequences both for governance and the economy,\u201d Steenhuisen said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked whether the existing coalition government could collapse, he said: \u201cIf the ANC bring the EFF in then I assume it will.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The DA has told the ANC that it will leave the GNU if the EFF joins the national coalition. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":790595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[20009],"class_list":["post-818789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-gnu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":818791,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818789\/revisions\/818791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Enlist Support<\/h1>\n\n\n\n