This Wednesday, the South African parliament will vote on this year's budget proposal amid a number of uncertainties.

On Tuesday, the parliamentary Finance Committee approved the fiscal structure of the budget, incorporating recommendations from the ACTION SA party.

Basically, ACTION SA is proposing that this year's budget be approved, but with the commitment that in a month's time the Treasury will return to parliament to present alternatives for income and expenditure that do not include an increase in VAT and income tax.

The report was approved in the Finance committee, with the support of the ANC, Inkata and Action SA.

Parties such as the Democratic Alliance, Umkhonto WeSizwe and the EFF disapproved of the commission's report and raised doubts about the commission's legal powers to make structural amendments to the report to be submitted to the plenary today.

On the other hand, they suspect that after the 30 days are up, the treasury could go back to parliament and say that it has no alternative, which, in their opinion, would mean that parliament would have approved the current proposal to increase VAT by zero point five percent.

The next battle will now be fought in parliament: the ANC has 159 votes and has already secured the support of several political parties, such as Inkata, the Patriotic Alliance, UDM, Rise Mzansi, Al Jama-ah, Good, PAC and Action SA.

In total, the ANC gets 200 votes, or half the parliament. That's why the ANC is negotiating with Build Where South Africa and the ACDP to get the imbalance vote.

Even so, the ANC is still trying to persuade the Democratic Alliance and FF Plus, which form part of the Government of National Unity, to approve the structure of the budget, with the recommendations suggested by ACTION SA.

The future of the National Unity Government itself is also at stake, since by voting against the budget, the Democratic Alliance may be signaling that it is on its way out.

The ANC has already said that the Government of National Unity is not anchored to the DA, so the departure of this party, it argues, cannot be interpreted as the end of the union executive. (RM)