Surely no one would want to trade places with South Africa's Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba on 21 February when he presents the national budget to Parliament. Political uncertainty and repeated downgrades from international rating agencies have placed enormous pressure on an economy that has been struggling to keep from falling back into recession.
It would have been difficult for Gigaba to balance the budget even without President Jacob Zuma's reckless decision in December 2017 to announce free higher education. But Gigaba now has to find the money to back Zuma's promise, and he has warned that he will have to make difficult decisions about which budgets to cut to fund this.
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