GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament
26 March 2025
The Western Cape MEC for Finance, Deidré Baartman, claimed that the Western Cape Government’s budget was tabled with every line item representing “allocative efficiency”. A fact that GOOD categorically rejects. If this were demonstrably true, we would have an entirely different looking budget with ineffective programmes scrapped in favour of funding more impactful frontline services which are the core mandate of provincial governments.
Allocative efficiency in public finance means getting the optimal mix and volume of public goods, services and transfers for given resources, with ‘optimal’ meaning the highest impact and greatest social return. However, the DA-led province continues to back the ineffective Safety Plan, spending big on a political vanity project that falls outside its mandate and has failed to yield any returns.
The Western Cape Safety Plan was introduced in 2019 with one clear objective – to halve the murder rate within 10 years, a virtuous goal. But, despite the billions of Rand spent on the programme, the number of murders has increased every year since the plan was implemented. This is confirmed in Baartman’s own “Budget Summary”, which has “murders growth of 12.2%” from 2019 to 2024.
Using the concept of ‘allocative efficiency” this Plan should be scrapped and the funding invested in projects and programmes that would have more impact on reducing crime: better housing, better social services, youth employment programmes and better education.
The Western Cape Safety Plan, which funds the City of Cape Town’s LEAP (Law Enforcement Advancement Plan) officers was funded by defunding critical services like Education.
In 2025, the Western Cape Education Department cited a shortage of funding as the reason for taking the drastic, and most uneducated, decision to cut 2,000 teacher posts for the current school year. The 2025 Budget, tabled today, continues to defund Education, despite the moderate additional allocations made to Education in the 2025 Budget.
The Western Cape Government will receive R68.3-billion from the fiscus as its Provincial Equitable Share. 48% of the Provincial Equitable Share is based on the Education demand in the province – being the number of children enrolled in public schools and the number of children of school going age living in the province.
In the 2025/26 financial year, this equates to R31.3-billion. Yet the WCED is only allocated R29.3-billion from the Provincial Equitable Share – a full R2-billion short of what the Education demand in the province requires.
The continued defunding of education, which is already showing signs of lacklustre performance, will simply worsen the education results, destroy our children’s futures, and ironically contribute to increasing violent crime rates.
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