MTBPS 2026: GBV and early childhood development get prioritised in mini budget of maximum efficiency

After deafening silence from the Presidency at the height of the Ekurhuleni horrors, we had a family meeting that said a lot of nothing. It seems President Cyril Ramaphosa is speaking with the national wallet.

It’s a cough-and-you-miss-it moment in the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (mini budget, to the rest of us), but if you flip to Chapter 4 – Expenditure Priorities – page 33, there’s a welcome commitment to the women, girls and children of South Africa.

“These savings will be reprioritised to prevent gender-based violence and femicide and to support priority health-sector interventions to combat child malnutrition and stunting.”

The savings referred to come from better verification measures for social grant beneficiaries – which Treasury is projecting to shave 700,000 fraudulent recipients off of the welfare scheme by the 2029/2030 fiscus. Which should return R6.2-billion, which will be reprioritised to fight GBV, femicide and child malnutrition.

The government is spending about R95-billion on improving and digitising general public services annually over the same period, which returns just over 1% on the capital spend.

Ulrike Britton, head of public finance in National Treasury, explained that much of this relief is coming from the social relief grant savings where the government is investing in “improving administration, technology, and data exchange”.

We will not call this focus on redirecting funds recovered through greater efficiencies an Elon Musk-style blunt audit, but it does seem to echo the sentiment at least.

The Social Relief of Distress grant will be extended for another year while work continues on integration with labour market activation, skills development and enterprise support interventions.

In the future there will be a policy change where SRD beneficiaries will be linked to employment, training and business opportunities through the MzansiXchange – as well as a broader rethink.

Wait, what’s an MzansiXchange? To quote director-general Duncan Pieterse, “It’s a project we are piloting this year that allows government departments to exchange data.” “The work on the MzanziXchange itself is being led by the Treasury, because for us, it links back into this integrity of our physical account,” the DG told Daily Maverick.

The MyMzansi app and the broader suite of digital public infrastructure is being done inside the interdepartmental working group on digitalisation that unites the common interests of the relevant DGs in the Presidency, Treasury and the Department of Communications and Digital technologies. “We can gain a lot in terms of our internal efficiencies by using the data that we have to improve verification across the ecosystem.