An elite detached from daily struggles

Recent remarks by the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, suggesting that those critical of his neoliberal policies “have nothing to do,” bear no responsibility, do nothing except march and most crucially “do not understand the economy,” demand a principled and serious response.

The Minister’s political formation took place within the organised working class. 

As General Secretary of NUMSA, a leading Marxist theoretician and a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party, he helped articulate one of the most rigorous critiques of neoliberal macroeconomics in the early democratic period. 

He penned Cosatu’s first formal rejection of GEAR in June 1996.

That rejection was neither emotional nor reckless. It was grounded in political economy. It was based on the understanding that macroeconomic frameworks are not neutral technical instruments; they embody class interests.

GEAR was opposed because it entrenched fiscal austerity in one of the most unequal societies on earth. It accelerated trade liberalisation before productive capacity was consolidated. It deepened financial integration without safeguarding industrial development. It imposed cost-recovery and market discipline on essential public services. It reduced the state into a referee whose role was limited to creating a conducive environment for capital accumulation.

The critique was principled: economic policy must serve social transformation, industrialisation and working-class advancement, not merely the confidence of financial markets.

When workers marched and criticised the macroeconomic direction under Minister Trevor Manuel, it was never about personalities. It was about policy. 

It was about defending jobs, state capacity and redistribution. To march against a framework is not to attack a person; it is to contest a direction.

That position was not immature then. It is not immature now

In his most recent Budget Speech, Godongwana claims that the economy has “turned the corner,” pointing to narrowing deficits, stabilising debt ratios and rising primary surpluses as signs of recovery. 

Yet the speech says virtually nothing about the catastrophic levels of unemployment that continue to define South Africa’s social landscape. 

It does not centre the entrenched poverty that leaves millions dependent on grants for survival. 

It does not meaningfully confront child malnutrition, stunting and the long-term health complications arising from chronic food insecurity. 

Instead, abstract fiscal indicators are elevated as proof of success.

Debt ratios improve. Primary balances rise. Investor confidence is reassured. But these metrics do not fill vacant nursing posts. 

They do not reduce overcrowded classrooms. They do not reverse deindustrialisation. They do not restore water systems in collapsing municipalities. They do not create jobs at the scale required. They do not materially improve the lot of the working class.

If the “corner” that has been turned leads to improved spreadsheets but unchanged social realities, then the claim must be interrogated.

Godongwana’s remarks do not exist in isolation. They follow a series of statements by high-ranking ANC officials that reflect an increasing political distance from working-class realities. 

In late-2025, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi declared that he would wake up at 02:00 and remove immigrants from informal settlements, scapegoating migrants for the government’s failure to develop rural economies, a failure that has driven mass urbanisation and the proliferation of informal settlements across Gauteng. 

The Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, claimed that young people are unemployed because they lack ambition and “bask in the sun” rather than search for jobs. 

The Gauteng Premier recently responded to residents enduring weeks without water by noting that he too suffers when there is no water and sometimes goes to a hotel to shower. These remarks are not isolated missteps. They signal an elite increasingly insulated from the daily struggles of the poor.  It is an elite that enjoys the security details, privileges and comforts of high office while dismissing protest as idleness.

History offers sobering lessons about what happens when governing elites grow detached from the lived conditions of the masses. 

Tsar Nicholas II of Russia presided over a society marked by deep inequality, food shortages and war fatigue, insulated within the structures of imperial power until mass discontent culminated in the Russian Revolution and his eventual deposition. 

In eighteenth-century France, Marie Antoinette and the aristocracy became emblematic of a ruling class disconnected from widespread hunger and economic distress, a detachment that fed revolutionary upheaval during the French Revolution. These examples are not invoked as threats but as historical reminders: when leadership ceases to hear the grievances of the people and instead trivialises them, legitimacy erodes.

To suggest that working-class communities and trade unions who protest austerity budgets “have nothing to do” is therefore deeply insulting. 

These budgets have ensured that hospitals are understaffed and overcrowded, schools are underfunded and overwhelmed and municipalities struggle to provide basic services. 

When nurses remain unappointed, when educator vacancies persist, when clinics operate beyond capacity, it is not because workers are bored. It is because fiscal policy has chosen consolidation over expansion.

Neoliberalism is not simply a budgeting preference. It is a class project. It prioritises deficit reduction over employment creation. It subordinates democratic planning to market signals. It constrains public investment in the name of fiscal prudence. It disciplines labour to reassure capital.

To argue that critics “do not understand the economy” implies that economic knowledge is confined to technocratic circles. Yet macroeconomic policy distributes power and resources. It reflects choices about who must adjust and who is protected.

Activists and trade unionists march not out of idleness but out of necessity. They confront structural unemployment, hunger, precarious work, collapsing municipalities and entrenched inequality. They march because democratic accountability requires public contestation of policy direction. If opposing austerity is immaturity, then consistency becomes inconvenient.

The working class was correct to oppose neoliberal orthodoxy when it was introduced. It remains correct to challenge it today.

Critiquing policy is not a personal attack. It is an expression of class position.

The deeper tragedy is that a movement once rooted in working-class aspirations risks being perceived as administering a model that entrenches inequality. 

When protest is trivialised and dissent dismissed as ignorance, the gap between leadership and the people widens.

Zwelinzima Vavi is General Secretary of the South African Federation of Trade Unions. He formerly held the same position at trade union federation Cosatu.