FEATURE
THINK BIG TO HEAL SOUTH AFRICAN SOCIETY BETH AMATO
The ructions caused by the pandemic are an opportunity to reconsider core values and spending priorities, both of which have the potential to address South Africa’s social ills and ultimately confer dignity.
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ords are insufficient to capture the economic and social tragedies in South Africa. Fifteen million people in this country (of the almost 60 million) have little or no income, says Lee-Anne Bruce, Head of Communications at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at Wits University. And while short-term social care measures brought about by Covid-19 were ‘pro-poor’, the money has never been enough and its distribution bungled. In June 2020, 37% of people ran out of money for food. Seventy percent of adults live below the Upper Bound Poverty Line of R1 268 per person per month. In this neck of the woods, we prefer to bail out a failed national airline carrier rather than feed people.
REDUCED SOCIAL ASSISTANCE A SLAP IN THE FACE “The special caregiver grants, which especially supported women and children, were brought to an end in October 2020. At the same time, government announced a bailout for South African Airways that would have covered another three months’ worth of these grant payments. And now, the most recent budget has actually cut social grant funding by more than 2%,” says Bruce. Over 18 million people – including older people, people living with disabilities and people living in poverty caring for children – depend on monthly grants. “Though the majority of these grants fall well below the food poverty line and the amounts are not nearly enough to support families, let alone lift them
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out of poverty, studies have shown that the child support grant in particular has an important role to play in food security and improving children’s health and education.” This basic lack of security has real effects: during the lockdown period, domestic violence against women and children increased (although it was already unacceptably high) and other longlasting social ills such as alcohol and drug abuse, inequality and xenophobia were exacerbated.
CONTINUING CONNECTIVITY
Professor Shireen Hassim from the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER), says that inequality and poverty, exacerbated by Covid-19, is everybody’s problem. “We are intrinsically interrelated. It is not in the common interest to have
