19 February 2010
The Pan Africanist Youth Congress (PAYCO) of Azania wish to express its utmost disappointment with the Minister’s budget speech as it has failed the poor, rural children, unemployed youth, women and students at Primary and Higher Institutions of Learning. The budget was great for capitalist who were rewarded for retrenching workers and not employing the jobless.
The Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordon, has proven to all and sundry that the ANC government remains committed to pursue neo-liberal economic policies that respond to the wants of capital at the expense of the needs of the poor African masses. The Minister’s budget failed completely to give detail on the President’s shallow State of the Nation Address as promised. The Minister’s speech entrenched deeply the regime’s reliance on GEAR policy, liberalisation and dishing out incentives to capitalist for retrenching workers.
We wish to express ourselves on the following issues that were not addressed by the Minister’s Budget speech:
Funding for Tertiary Education
Funds for tertiary education remain one of the thorny issues in our country; African students remain excluded by the current system hence we call for total abolishment of the current funding system. The amount of money allocated to NSFAS has ensured that poor African students remain financially and academically excluded. We call for the quasi communist minister of higher education Blade Nzimande to live up to communist expectations and demand a universal free compulsory socialist education from Grade 0 to first Degree at University level.
Job Creation
The budget failed to respond to the number one crisis in the country which is joblessness. The Budget has not made any emergency allocations to fight and arrest this crisis that has condemned our people and youth to abject poverty. We have noted another lie from the state of nations address, the promise for 800 000 jobs for young people was not even mentioned in the budget speech whereas we were told that detail shall follow. It’s high time the youth take up arms and take this government to task.
Rural Schools
For the past 15 years we have witnessed with great dismay the state of rural schools and both the state of nation address and budget speech chose to neglect this matter. This is testimony to the fact that they do not take development and education of rural people serious. 15 years on we still have learners having lessons under trees. If classes are there poor learners are bound to be over crowded like sardines in a tin. We fully support the action by parents at Lindelani, KZN who closed down a school with dilapidating structures to protect their children wellbeing. We regard this action as responsible parenthood and reject with contempt the threat by Zuma’s veranda boy, Senzo Mchunu, that they would take legal action against these responsible parents. We further call on the government to take full responsibility in making sure that rural schools are on par with schools in towns and cities.
Inflation Targeting
As expected, the budget has dogmatically made sure that the devilish inflation targeting policy remains in place. The government has made it clear that they do not care about the hardships of the downtrodden masses by maintain this dubious policy. Inflation targeting has hindered the economic growth for years hence we saw a lot of jobs being lost and South Africans paying the highest interest rates. The only beneficiary of this policy is the capitalist market sucking blood from poor working class masses. We therefore call for an immediate scrapping of the inflation targeting policy in order for our people to be economically emancipated. We call for a monetary policy that will result in financial stability for South Africa.
Issued by:
Lucky Khoza
PAYCO Secretary General
