JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s president on Tuesday announced an “extraordinary budget” of $500 billion rand ($26 billion) to address the huge socioeconomic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, saying that “our country and the world we live in will never be the same again." President Cyril Ramaphosa in a national address said the “historic” amount is roughly 10% of the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa's most developed country.
The top priorities are combating the virus and relieving “hunger and social distress” as millions of South Africans struggle to survive under lockdown, he said.
One-tenth of the new special budget will go toward the country’s most vulnerable people over the next six months in one of the world’s most unequal nations.