When MP Adil Nchabeleng warned that South Africa may be spending R1.1 billion a day on debt servicing, Treasury’s calm response exposed a deeper crisis. While officials speak of stabilisation and forecasts, debt continues to crowd out schools, hospitals and infrastructure, with little accountability for the failures that caused it.
When MP Adil Nchabeleng asked the Minister of Finance whether government is now spending R1.1 billion a day on debt servicing, the question was not rhetorical. It was a warning.
The reply he received, however, was a masterclass in how to acknowledge danger without accepting responsibility a familiar tune in South Africa’s fiscal politics. It is this contradiction that defines our moment: while the nation edges closer to a debt trap, the official soundtrack remains calm, technical and reassuring. These are the jingle bells pleasant, polished, and dangerously misleading.
A Question Rooted in Reality
Nchabeleng’s parliamentary question went to the heart of the crisis. He asked not only whether Treasury recognises the scale of debt-servicing costs, but what immediate fiscal interventions have been implemented to prevent a full-scale debt trap one repeatedly warned about by economists and even the South African Reserve Bank.
He pressed further:
What mismanagement, irregular expenditure and inefficiencies drove this crisis?
What consequence management has followed?
Where is the time-bound plan to reduce debt servicing, now exceeding spending on policing, basic education and infrastructure?
And crucially: what is the long-term risk to economic stability, unemployment and service delivery?
These are not abstract concerns. They speak directly to the lived experience of public servants, communities and a generation inheriting a state whose future revenue is already spoken for.
The Official Reply: Calm on the Surface
Treasury’s response concedes the pressure but immediately wraps it in forecasts and projections. Yes, debt-service costs amount to R1.36 trillion over the medium term. Yes, they currently consume 21.4% of government revenue their peak, we are told. But growth will “slow”, borrowing costs have “declined”, and debt servicing will “stabilise” and “decline steadily thereafter”. This is the jingle-bell narrative: technically correct, politically soothing, and strategically evasive. Nowhere in the reply is there an answer to the most pointed parts of the question. Treasury does not identify specific spending failures, named departments, or consequences for those whose misconduct inflated the debt stock. Instead, the rise in debt-service costs is attributed to neutral forces: interest rates, inflation, exchange rates as if state capture, SOE bailouts, inflated procurement and years of fiscal drift were acts of nature.
The Nation Beneath the Waterline
Behind the projections lies the reality: R1.1 billion every day is money that does not build schools, staff hospitals, fix water systems or expand rail. In 2025/26 alone, R421.5 billion will go to debt servicing almost one-third of what is allocated to the entire social wage. Treasury insists that spending on health, education and economic development is “growing faster” than debt-service costs. That may be statistically true, but it is politically hollow in a country where hospitals are understaffed, classrooms overcrowded, and infrastructure collapsing. As economist Kevin Lings has observed, countries with high debt levels usually have visible assets to show for it. South Africa largely does not. The debt was incurred, but the value evaporated siphoned off through corruption, mismanagement and elite impunity. This is why the analogy offered by another MP rings so true: it is like a parent maxing out a credit card and leaving the bill to their children limiting their future ability to learn, work and live with dignity.
What the Reply Avoids
Perhaps most telling is what Treasury does not commit to. There is no public date for releasing a comprehensive risk assessment on unemployment, service delivery and long-term stability. There is no binding, time-bound plan to shrink debt servicing as a share of the budget. And there is no admission that fiscal credibility cannot be restored without accountability. Active debt management, floating rate notes and maturity smoothing may buy time. They do not fix the structural problem: a state that borrows heavily but struggles to convert debt into development.
From Reassurance to Responsibility
South Africa does not need better metaphors from Treasury. It needs political courage. Improving spending efficiency cannot remain a slogan while the public wage bill grows unchecked and failing SOEs absorb billions without reform. Strengthening SARS cannot be postponed while its budget is cut. Fiscal consolidation cannot succeed without growth and growth will not come without policy certainty, infrastructure investment and an environment where productive enterprise is rewarded over rent-seeking. Above all, debt sustainability requires consequence management. Without it, every projection of stabilisation is merely another verse in the same comforting song. The jingle bells may sound reassuring in Parliament. But outside, the nation feels the water rising. And unless we confront the real causes of our debt not just its symptoms the music will stop long before the bill does.
Tahir Maepa is the Secretary General of the Public Service and Commercial Union of South Africa (PSCU) and founder of Resistance Against Impunity Movement (RAIM) NPC.
