South Africans will hear next week how the government plans to spend over the next year. If we look back, just a year, to last budget day, we have to acknowledge that plans can indeed go astray. None of us, least of all finance minister Tito Mboweni, foresaw the disaster of the Covid-19 pandemic, which continues to wreak immense damage, not only on people’s health and way of life,  but also on our fragile economy. This is the critical context in which Budget 2021 has been compiled.

The budget is critically important to people in all walks of life, be they pensioners and other grant recipients hoping for a little bit more to keep the wolf from the door, consumers whose purchases contribute to the state’s coffers via VAT, small business owners hoping for incentives and tax breaks as they try to get back on their feet, property developers hoping for a better climate for sales and, of course, industrialists and investors...