Skweyiya acknowledges the need for a basic income grant

CAPE TOWN – Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya has cautioned that  a  basic income grant for the destitute has to be well planned and managed to ensure that “everyone gets what is rightly theirs”.

“Nobody disputes the call for a Basic Income Grant. Nobody disputes that we need a comprehensive social security system in SA.

“One thing that comes out very clearly is that introducing such a big change in our lives needs a little bit more planning and for Government to be able to do that, Government should be prepared.

“We have problems now distributing pensions to the elderly only and children. The system is not up to date at the present moment. Can you imagine if we have to give this (Basic Income Grant) to almost everybody? Will it ever be able to administer and manage that within two months? Do we have a civil service that is able to do that?

“Now you want to give six-year old children their own money. Now really. The system is not there, we need to create the system. I am not talking about the money part of it all, but the ability to be able to manage, that is not a small thing.”

Skweyiya also says government is in no financial position to care for children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic and will have to lean even more heavily on non-governmental organisations and churches to care for them and the private sector to provide the funds.

“The main issue for us was to locate where those children (orphans) are and to find ways in which to assist them. Now we are able to say where they are and to dish out the little resources we have within our coffers, but we have found that we don’€™t have enough money.”

Skweyiya is planning a Business Summit in the near future where he hopes the private sector will pledge not only their rands, but also their expertise.

“We need to be more focused and to say in a village there is water, electricity, there is a place where people can get their pensions, there is a school and there is a clinic ‘€“ so people can look after themselves as they are able to plough and to have their required nutrition.

“We can say to the business sector ‘€˜the village has so many orphans, it will cost so much, what can you do to assist us?’€™,” says Skweyiya.

He favours orphans remaining in their communities because if they are “removed from where they are born, from their communities, they lose their roots”.

“But if we are able to assist those communities to keep those children to ensure they get their culture, their customs and their language, in the community in which they grow up, there is a possibility they could be better citizens in the future. Hence we are encouraging community based care and that is where churches have been very, very good,” he says.

For Skweyiya, “the main thing is children” and a nutrition programme is a major safety net for impoverished children.

“African children are failing not because they are stupid. It is because they do not have the rightful and enough nutrition for them to survive for the eight hours at school.

“I come from a poor family. And when we were children, when we came to school in the morning we would get a cup of cocoa with milk and a piece of bread. We eat and at lunchtime, about 11, during the break we would get a meal from the church. We would eat and then we would go back to school.

“During this time when there are grapes and fruits in summer, as we get into our homes we would get fruits. That was enough. That didn’€™t come from Government. It came from churches and private sector organisations.

“I’€™m not saying all these things are going to come from heaven, no, it is some of the things that we as South Africans individually and collectively can do.

If we have this nutrition programme, we employ the mamas of these children to cook there (at school), not to hand out these things to people who make money out of it.

“If you can do that with these mamas, they are satisfied. They [can] do something for the community and they get paid for that. It is possible to be done if we are better organized as people.”

Skweyiya also offers a sobering voice on the hot potato of a grant for people living with HIV/AIDS.

“We do sympathise. I have met in certain provinces where people are the weakest of the weak and they receive a grant.

“But where they are doing that, it is not something Government has agreed to. I think it goes according to case by case and discretion lies mostly with department officials, but more importantly on the social workers when they look at families in general.

“I know I’€™ve see quite a number of people getting some disability grant from the government. It is not something that has legally been agreed to yet.

“We don’€™t have the money. I don’€™t want to tell lies. We don’€™t have the money.

“There are families for instance whereby when the social worker comes he/she finds that there are children in this family, the mother is left alone, there is no food, there is nothing.

In that case they give them some assistance, some food package for a month. But also finding some ways or means in which they get some disability grant. But as I say it is not something being prescribed by Government

It is something at the discretion of the social worker. I have seen that and I have not quarrelled about it.

The MECs have explained to me why they do that. You can’€™t leave children with nothing to eat with the mother hardly able to do anything.”

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  • healthe

    Health-e News is South Africa's dedicated health news service and home to OurHealth citizen journalism. Follow us on Twitter @HealtheNews

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