We Keep Budgeting for the Poor… But Nothing Changes
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Another budget came and went, and if you are a business accountant in practice, you did not need to read the speech to understand what it means.
Your clients are still under pressure.
Cash flow is still tight.
Compliance is still increasing.
And somehow, you are still expected to make everything work. Let’s stop pretending. This is not just a tough economy, this is a system that is not working.
The System Has Produced Failure
South Africa is the most unequal country in the world by Gini coefficient. That's not a opinion — it's what the World Bank's global poverty database says. Around 33 million South Africans live below the upper bound poverty line of R1 109 per person per month. Nearly 14 million survive on less than R663 a month. Youth unemployment for 15 to 24-year-olds sits above 60%.
The money being spent isn't reaching the people it's meant to reach. And with the 2026/27 budget cycle now underway and the Mid-Term Budget Policy Statement approaching, CIBA decided it was time to act.
On 24-25 March 2026 CIBA co-hosted the Pro-Poor Budget Conference with the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), the Alliance of Non-profit Organisations Networks (ANNET), and the Royal Leaders of South Africa (ROLESA).
The goal was simple: bring the right people into a room, identify what's broken, and put concrete recommendations in front of the President and the Minister of Finance before the next budget is set.
It Is Not How Much Funds We Have. It is How We Spend It.
This is the finding CIBA presented directly to Parliament's Select Committee on Appropriations: South Africa doesn't primarily have a funding problem. It has a governance and implementation problem.
Between R10 and R13 billion in conditional government grants goes unspent every single year — roughly 10 to 12% of total allocations. The money exists. The delivery system doesn't work.
Government currently measures success by counting outputs — how many households were connected, how many projects were completed. But outputs aren't outcomes. A household connected to electricity that cuts out daily isn't a success. A road built but not maintained isn't either. Until real, measurable, reliable service delivery becomes the benchmark for how the budget is judged, the same cycle will repeat.
Political Interference in Procurement Is Costing Communities
At the centre stage of all problems is the one that doesn't get named loudly enough — political interference.
Finance officials whose job it is to enforce compliance are routinely pressured to approve irregular expenditure or look the other way on procurement irregularities. Many do so because they have no protection if they push back.
This isn't a bureaucratic inconvenience. Every irregular contract approved under political pressure is money that doesn't reach a school, a clinic, or a water system. It is direct harm to the communities the budget is supposed to serve.
CIBA has proposed a practical fix: an Accountants' Protection and NOCLAR Compliance Fund. This would give finance professionals legal protection, financial support, and personal security when they report wrongdoing. The logic is simple, if you want people to enforce accountability, you have to protect them when they do.
Compliant Taxpayers Are Losing Faith
There's another problem CIBA raised in its formal pre-budget submission to National Treasury in February 2026: tax morale is falling.
When South Africans pay their taxes but can't see where the money goes, when roads don't get fixed, hospitals run out of medicine, and governance failures make headlines, they start asking why they bother. Small businesses face frequent audits while large-scale leakages go unaddressed. That's not a perception problem. It's a fairness problem, and it's pushing people toward informality.
CIBA's position is clear: sustainable revenue doesn't come from squeezing a narrow, already-compliant base harder. It comes from expanding the tax base, making compliance easier, and giving people a reason to trust the system. That means outcome-based reporting on public spending, risk-based enforcement that targets the big leakages, and simpler compliance processes for small businesses and NPOs.
What Needs to Change
The conference discussed and provided the way forward on several structural issues.
Empowerment policyneeds to shift from race-based BBBEE to poverty-based criteria, directing opportunity to those who are actually excluded, including the millions of South Africans in rural communities under traditional leadership.
Social supportneeds rethinking. The conference explored a Negative Income Tax model, where households below a set income threshold receive direct government payments, as a more effective alternative to the current fragmented grants system.
SMEs are being strangled by compliance costs. The VAT registration threshold of R1 million hasn't kept pace with reality. At that turnover level, most businesses are still survivalist enterprises, not profitable ones. CIBA has called for meaningful threshold increases, simplified compliance pathways, and state-backed credit guarantee schemes so small businesses can actually execute the contracts they win.
NPOs, which deliver essential services in the communities government can't reach, are drowning in duplicated reporting requirements. Worse, the Department of Social Development is both their main funder and their regulator, a structural conflict that undermines accountability on both sides. CIBA has called for an independent NPO regulator and a single harmonised national reporting framework.
State-owned enterprises continue to bleed the economy. Transnet's rail failures have been estimated to cost over R400 billion. Eskom's load shedding hits small businesses in poor communities hardest, the ones who can't afford generators. Genuine reform, with real governance accountability and private sector participation, isn't optional.
What Comes Next
The conference is planning to produce a White Paper, to be submitted to the President and the Minister of Finance. It also called for the reinstatement of the People's Budget Platform, a formal mechanism for civil society to engage with the budget process before decisions are made, not after.
The timing of this is important to shape what the 2026/27 budget actually looks like for the people who need it most.
CIBA's involvement, across the Pro-Poor Budget Conference, the parliamentary submission on the Division of Revenue Bill, and the National Treasury pre-budget submission all point to the same conclusion: accountants aren't just scorekeepers. They see where the money goes and where it doesn't. That makes them some of the most important voices in this conversation.
South Africa has the money to do better. The question is whether the people managing it will be held to account.
Delegates will gain insights into:
The constitutional foundations of South Africa’s budgeting framework
The purpose and effectiveness of the Equitable Share system
The relationship between fiscal policy, economic participation, and social justice
Institutional accountability in public finance management
Governance challenges affecting provincial and municipal resource allocation
Practical reforms that could strengthen fiscal transparency and accountability
The role of professional finance leadership in strengthening public finance governance
