25 June 2025
Honorable Members, it is prudent to first welcome the budget as tabled by the Department. Without it, the policy aspirations and service delivery targets would not be effected. With the 2025 Budget that aims to strengthen the economy and improve our people’s living conditions, it is a crucial tool for driving development, eradicating poverty, and reducing inequality. At a period of constricted economic growth and limited fiscal flexibility, the budget must provide appropriate resources to programs that promote inclusive growth and establish the framework for long-term economic recovery. This reflects the Government of National Unity’s strategic aims, which include inclusive growth and job creation, poverty reduction and combating high living costs, and the establishment of a capable, ethical, and developmental state. The Budget demonstrates the government’s commitment to improving South Africans’ material situations.
It was the ANC’s 55th National which resolved that “building a developmental state that provides effective basic services and with capabilities to take forward a far-reaching agenda of national economic development, whilst at the same time placing people and their involvement at the centre of this process.”
The Department of Public Service Administration, together with the National School of Government, plays a critical role in creating an enabling environment to guarantee that government departments that provide services have the necessary capacity to carry out their duty. Over the 2025/26 financial year, the department will focus on expanding the battle against corruption in the public sector, monitoring the implementation of the professionalization framework, ensuring adherence to Batho Pele principles, and finalising critical bills that enable the department and its entities to function optimally.
The introduction of the National Anti-Corruption hotline signifies the resolve by PSC to annihilate the scourge of corruption that has engulfed the state for far too long. It is promising to see the budget allocation increase for the Integrity Anti-Corruption Programme. The PSC is required by the Constitution to exercise its powers and to perform its functions without fear, favour or prejudice. The Constitution links the PSC’s independence firmly with its impartiality, and no organ of state may interfere with the functioning of the PSC.
Honourable Speaker, a common denominator in the Auditor General’s report, as well as Budget Reviews and Recommendations, is that departments, provinces, and local governments lack skills matching. Most of these entities’ inability to perform optimally is due to the appointment of personnel without relevant and requisite skills in critical positions. The ANC-led 6th administration has introduced a professionalization framework to enable the PSC to enforce merit-based employment and ensure suitable candidates are appointed. This is a win against nepotism, maladministration, and incompetence.
With the current budget, the Department will conduct collective bargaining and create an enabling environment for public services staff to ensure an environment that encourages productivity, resulting in the ideal levels of service delivery to residents.
Honourable Member, it is worth noting that we are creating the present and ultimately the future on the womb of the past; consequently, the present will have the birthmark and the semblance of the past. The semblance of a litany of grafts, nepotism, maladministration, and recent revelation of ghost workers, which were characterised as state capture, has been challenged head-on but not annihilated. Public service is still facing several corruption challenges stemming from the unethical behaviour of some of its rank and file staff members. To overcome rampant corruption department has initiated the investigation of a lifestyle audit among its staff to root out undesirable members and enforce consequence management in all state institutions.
Honourable Members, one of the crises that bedevils the government is the issue of youth unemployment. We cannot underestimate the anxiety that comes with joblessness. Although the employment of youth without the requirement of experience has increased over the last financial year, it is still very low for an acceptable standard. It is worth noting that the budget has approved and funded the voluntary early retirement; this initiative will open more space for the young graduates without disproportionately increasing the wage bill. There shall be a delicate balance between opening doors for fresh blood, innovation, and new thinking, and the retention of critical skills for institutional memory and progress. Losing critical skills would be characterised as a regression in the country’s development.
The current epoch epitomizes what the father of our nation once said, “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb”. The challenges we are facing need resilience, perseverance, dedication, and all hands on deck.