THE BUDGET AS TRUTH 1
Comparing Budget Line Items
Budget as Truth Article 1 | Thinking about it
Published May 2026
by Shelley Childs
A government’s values are not found in its speeches. They are found in its line items.
On Good Friday 2026, a thirteen-year-old girl was raped. The man responsible appeared in court days later. Within hours of the news breaking, the ministerial statements followed — the familiar chorus of outrage, condemnation, and commitment to protecting South Africa’s women and children. We have heard these statements before. We will hear them again. But statements are not priorities. Priorities are found elsewhere.
I found myself wondering, as I often do when the speeches begin, whether the outrage was matched by resource allocation. Because if the protection of women and children is a genuine national priority, the budget will say so. Budgets are not administrative documents. They are moral statements made in financial terms.
So, I looked at the Estimates of National Expenditure (ENE) — the detailed departmental budget document published annually by National Treasury.
What the numbers say
For 2025/26, SAPS protection and security services received R4.34 billion in total, of which R2.34 (*1) billion (more than half) goes to the VIP protection unit alone — a budget that has grown by over 25% since 2021/2022 (*2). Against this, the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities has a total 2025/26 appropriation of R1.36 billion of which R1.1. billion transfers to the National Youth Development Agency and Commission for Gender Equality. (*3) Of the departments own operational budget, R67,6 million over the medium term is specifically allocated to advocacy and mainstreaming for women’s rights.(*4)
The ten-year National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide, which President Ramaphosa describes as the government’s comprehensive response to the crisis, is funded at approximately R21 billion over a decade — roughly R2.1 billion per year across all departments combined. (5*)
The arithmetic is stark. But it becomes starker when reduced to per-person terms.
The vulnerable population is also larger than the headline figures suggest. The Optimus Study, a nationally representative study of adolescents aged 15 to 17, found that 36.8% of boys reported some form of sexual abuse — slightly higher than the 33.9% of girls — yet boys account for fewer than 10% of reported child rape cases. The gap between experience and reporting reflects stigma, shame, and a legal framework that only recognised rape of males in 2007. Boys are also the primary victims of violent assault, attempted murder and murder among child victims. The R70 per person figure in the table below covers women and girls. What about boys?
The numbers in human terms
| VIP Protection | Women & Girls: GBV | |
| Annual budget | R2.17 billion (VIP unit) | ~R2.1 billion (all depts) |
| Population served | ~200 named national dignitaries (6) | ~30 million women and girls |
| Annual spend per person | ~R11,7 million per named dignatary | ~R70 per woman or girl |
The two budgets are almost identical in size. The budgets are virtually the same. The people behind the numbers are not.
Note: These figures cover national government budgets only. Provincial premiers, MECs, municipal mayors and councillors receive close protection funded separately through provincial and municipal budgets not considered here. The total protected population across all tiers of government is substantially larger. Similarly, GBV-related spending occurs across multiple departments including Social Development, Justice, and Health, and through provincial and municipal safe houses and support services. The comparison above uses the most directly comparable national figures available.
What the Constitution says
This disparity is not merely a policy disagreement. Section 12 of the Constitution guarantees every person the right to be free from all forms of violence from either public or private sources. The Constitutional Court has held explicitly that the police service is “one of the primary agencies of the State responsible for the protection of the public in general and women and children in particular.” The obligation is constitutional, not discretionary.
The same Constitution that mandates VIP protection mandates the protection of women and children from violence. The budget does not treat them equally.
What the cost of failure tells us
In 2014, KPMG estimated the annual economic cost of gender-based violence to South Africa at between R28.4 billion and R42.4 billion — figures the report itself described as ‘a partial or minimum estimate of the true costs. We spend a fraction of that preventing violence against women and girls, and many times more protecting those least at risk of it. The true cost is almost certainly higher; the prevention budget is not.
The R21 billion figure to be used in preventing Gender based Violence and Femicide is drawn from President Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address and represents an aggregated cross-cutting allocation across multiple departmental votes covering the six pillars of the GBVF National Strategic Plan. It does not appear as a discrete line item in the Estimates of National Expenditure.
As KPMG noted as far back as 2014, government spending on GBV is not ring-fenced and is therefore unidentifiable in national expenditure data. A government that cannot show precisely where it spends money on a stated priority cannot be held accountable for whether it spends it effectively. More worrying is that it may reflect a lack of commitment. The VIP protection budget has no such ambiguity.
We spend a fraction of that preventing violence against women and girls, and many times more protecting those least at risk of it.
Professor Fiona Murray of MIT, presenting on innovation strategy in 2026, observes that organisations frequently recognise that they must invest in new directions to survive, yet their budgets continue to reflect old priorities. The principle applies equally to government. Impact is not measured in ministerial statements. It is measured in outcomes — for the thirteen-year-old girl, and the thirty million like her.
And decisions including budgets, have consequences that persist long after the microphone is switched off.
Question: Does how your money is spent reflect your own values?
This is the first article in the Budget as Truth series on Thinking about It.
* Sources and further reading:
1 National Treasury (2025). Estimates of National Expenditure: Vote 28 — Police, Table 28.14. Pretoria: National Treasury. Available at: https://www.treasury.gov.za/documents/National%20Budget/2025May/ene/FullENE.pdf
2 Ibid.
3 Chikunga, S. (2025). Budget Vote Speech: Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, 2025/26. Pretoria: Government of South Africa. Available at: https://www.gov.za/news/speeches/minister-sindisiwe-chikunga-women-youth-and-persons-disabilities-dept-budget-voteNational Treasury (2025). Estimates of National Expenditure: Vote 20 — Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities. Pretoria: National Treasury.
4 National Treasury (2025). Estimates of National Expenditure: Vote 20 — Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Advocacy and Mainstreaming for the Rights of Women programme. Pretoria: National Treasury.
5 Government of South Africa (2024/2025). State of the Nation Address. YouTube video. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM0d2DfKPK8&t=60s [Note: Video metadata is inconsistent across government platforms, variously dated 2023, 2024 and 2025]. The R21 billion figure appears in this address but does not correspond to a discrete Treasury line item in the Estimates of National Expenditure. Subsequent government communications in 2025 and 2026 reference programme outputs and activities without restating the original allocation. Government spending on GBVF is not ring-fenced in the ENE and cannot be independently verified from departmental budget votes.
6 Ramaphosa, C. (2024). Written parliamentary response to DA leader John Steenhuisen, April 2024. As reported by IOL/Cape Times, April 2024.
7. Khumalo, B., Msimang, S. & Bollbach, K. (2014). Too Costly to Ignore — The Economic Impact of Gender-Based Violence in South Africa. Johannesburg: KPMG Human and Social Services. Note: Cost data based on 2012/13 figures.
The question is, how do we get the budget to reflect the things that matter, health, welfare, security, education, and above all , the growth of our economy to fund the things that matter?
