Marie Schoeman

Why does @MYANC fear taking control of National Treasury? In June 2025, Admiral Monde Lobese correctly remarked that @Treasury_RSA is at the centre of the collapse of the South African National Defence Force (@SANDF_ZA). Last week, I saw a video of Prof @ThuliMadonsela3 complaining about Treasury, saying she has a big problem with them. Then yesterday, Prof Somadoda Fikeni asked an important question at the Madlanga Commission: is South Africa strategy-led or Treasury-led? And if some of us agree it is Treasury-led, how do we understand South Africa's current economic crisis? I wonder if they heard what he asked. I completed my doctoral thesis in 2021, graduated in 2022, looking at what relationship South Africa has with institutions that have influence globally within the financial sector, studying the history and character of economic policy decisions, who and how these are internalised and domesticated to craft the kind of economy we have today, highly financialized economy coexisting with unimaginable poverty levels with none or very little productive economy. This is the last paragraph on page 229 of the thesis: “Our failure to understand the Treasury also limits our understanding of South Africa’s relationship with international finance and its impact on the structural socio-economic and environmental decline, which will continue to undermine all efforts at shifting to more radical modes of contesting economic power, including that of the Treasury. In conclusion, the Treasury is the most important and powerful state institution in South Africa, one whose prestige is preserved by post-politicisation mechanisms that were a result of a class project to address the falling rate of profit. The Zuma era demonstrated that Treasury prestige can be challenged; all that is required is for intellectuals and activist campaigns to replace a neocolonial project of financial control with one that represents genuine economic decolonisation in pursuit of economic justice.” You can find the complete thesis here: wiredspace.wits.ac.za/items/….