Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana delivered the 2026 Budget on Wednesday, February 26. On the 25th of February 2026, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana stood before Parliament and delivered a budget built on a story of redemption. Five years back, South Africa was grey-listed by the Financial Action Task Force, it was downgraded to junk status, and reeled from State Capture.
On Wednesday, he told us, the country has been removed from the FATF grey list, that it received its first credit rating upgrade in 16 years, and achieved debt stabilisation for the first time in 17 years. These are commendable achievements and they matter. But achievements in a boardroom do not automatically translate into a better life in Khayelitsha, Mamelodi, or in Rustenburg.
These are the kinds of measures that are of benefit to the aspirational middle class, the South African who earns enough to pay tax but does not earn enough to be insulated from inflation. This group has been silently squeezed for years. The 2023 and 2024 budgets offered them little beyond the usual rhetoric of fiscal consolidation.
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In 2026, they get something concrete. These numbers are not shocking in isolation. They are shocking when you place them against the cost of a bag of maize meal, a litre of cooking oil, and a box of candles, and all of these items have risen faster than these grant increases over the past two years.
Statistics South Africa’s data consistently shows that food inflation hits low-income households the hardest, often running several percentage points above headline inflation. A R20 increase on the child support grant in this environment is not a lifeline. It can be considered a gesture.
The Social Relief of Distress grant, the R370 payment that about 8 million people currently receive, is continuing” in its current form.” This phrase does significant political work while doing very little economic work. South Africa’s unemployment rate is still above 32 percent by the official measure, and above 40 percent by the expanded definition. The SRD grant is definitely not a solution to unemployment.
It is a pressure valve. The budget offers no structural answer to the fact that millions of working-age South Africans have no income and no prospect of formal employment. The minister projected real economic growth of 1.6% in 2026, rising to 2% by 2028.
He had presented this as an improvement. Technically, it is. However, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have both noted, repeatedly, that South Africa is in need of a growth of at least 5% per year to make a meaningful dent in unemployment.
At 1.6%, the economy is barely keeping pace with the population growth. South Africa is not getting wealthier. It is remaining the same, while millions of people wait for a turn that mathematics suggests is not coming.
The mentioning of foot-and-mouth disease as a risk factor is one of the more unusual items in a national budget speech, but it does reflect a real vulnerability. South Africa’s agricultural sector employs hundreds of thousands of people in rural areas where formal employment is almost nonexistent. A sustained outbreak could devastate livelihoods in provinces such as Limpopo and the Eastern Cape where the state is already stretched thin.
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