In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

What We Know Can’t Hurt Them: Origins, Sources of Sustenance, and Survival Prospects of Budget Transparency in South Africa steven friedman Asustained and high level of budget transparency flowing not from a government ’s vulnerability to public pressure but from its insulation from it seems counterintuitive. This, however, may provide an accurate picture for the country rated by the International Budget Partnership (IBP) as the most transparent in the world—South Africa. This chapter discusses the sources of budget transparency in South Africa, arguing that transparency has been introduced and sustained not because of the presence of overt public pressure on government officials, but because of its absence. It suggests that, while the government never faced direct pressure to provide budget information and a transparent budget process, the fact that it did so and that openness has not faced any significant counterpressure is a result of an unusual context in which the balance of forces in the economy and society created an environment conducive to transparency. It also suggests that the very factors that ensure high levels of transparency also ensure that transparency has little role in empowering the citizenry and is far more useful to government than to citizens. The State of Budget Transparency in South Africa According to IBP’s 2010 Open Budget Index (OBI), South Africa’s level of budget transparency is the highest of all the countries surveyed, with a score of 51 2 02-2337-0 CH 2:PWW 2284-7 3/11/13 2:25 PM Page 51 ninety-two out of 100.1 South Africa publishes all eight of the key budget documents required by the survey—and for seven of the eight it received an A for level of information, indicating that “extensive” information is available. Its audit report is the only exception; it received a B score, indicating that “‘significant” information is available. However, the survey also found that the executive’s budget proposal lacks information on quasi-fiscal activities, tax expenditures, and financial and other assets. It added, “Despite laudable efforts to improve monitoring and evaluation systems, the budget proposal still lacks information on outputs and outcomes.”2 Despite these reservations, the survey reached a strongly favorable conclusion on the degree of budget transparency in South Africa. Nonetheless, the IBP measure may significantly overstate the degree of effective transparency. It assesses only the performance of national government; provincial and local governments are not nearly as transparent, even in the formal sense.3 An IBP study on parastatals in South Africa, which has not yet been published , found weaknesses in transparency in the use of public funds.4 And at the national level, while South Africa’s Auditor General’s office meets all the formal standards of independence and transparency, it is repeatedly forced to issue qualified audits for some government departments that have supplied insufficient accurate information.5 Although this confirms the autonomy of the auditing institution, it shows that information on how government departments spend their money is not always available. Thus an unpublished research report by Neil Overy for the IBP notes, “South Africa’s budget documents provide very little detailed information about what happens to . . . money once [it is] transferred out of the national fiscus. . . . The documents released by the relevant parastatals do even less to fill this void in South Africa’s budget transparency picture.”6 A government official eager to defend the transparency regime asserted, “Our budget at national level is far more transparent, user friendly, clear, accurate, and honest than the United Kingdom’s”—a significant statement given that the standards of the former colonial power are often cited in South African debates as those against which achievement should be measured. He added, “The estimates of national 52 Steven Friedman 1. IBP (2010). 2. See the summary for South Africa in IBP (2010). 3. As only one of many examples, in 2008 the Public Service Accountability Monitor was obliged to use legal action to force the Eastern Cape government to release a report assessing citizens’ assessment of its performance. See judgment in Public Service Accountability Monitor and N Mkhize v. Director-General, Office of the Premier, Eastern Cape Provincial Government and Premier, Eastern Cape Provincial Government, High Court of South Africa, Eastern Cape Division, Case no. 6047/07, May 29, 2008 (www.saflii.org/za/ cases/ZAECHC/2008/70.rtf). 4. Personal communication to author by IBP, October 17, 2010. 5. See, for example, Parliamentary Monitoring Group (2010). 6. Cited in Dlamini and...

Share