Mbeki hits back on poverty claim

from the Mail and Guardian

President Thabo Mbeki on Friday railed against the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) for making "the startling claim" that more South Africans are now poorer than they were in 1996. The SAIRR, in turn, defended itself in a statement released later in the day.

Writing in his weekly newsletter on the African National Congress website, Mbeki said the truth will prevail, and the pernicious tendency to falsify reality to advance the particular agendas of forces against the movement and national democratic revolution has to be opposed.

Earlier this week, there was "yet another canard in the making".

"This time the source of the canard was the South African Institute of Race Relations, which made the startling claim that the masses of our people are now poorer than they were in 1996," he said.

On Monday, the SAIRR published a report that claimed that "using the globally accepted measure of poverty, of people living on less than one United States dollar per day, poverty has increased in South Africa, both in absolute numbers and proportionally. The proportion of South Africans living on less than $1 a day doubled between 1996 and 2005."

Mbeki said, however, according to the Development Indicators Mid-Term Review published by the Presidency in June, since 2002 strong overall income growth, including the expansion of social grants, has resulted in the rise of the income of the poorest 10% and 20% of the population.

The review said per-capita real income for the poorest 10% in 1996 was R522, which increased to R734 by 2006. The figures for the poorest 20 percent were R758 and R1 051.

The review also included, among other things, a poverty headcount index, which showed the percentage of people living below the poverty line dropping from 53,1% in 1996 to 43,2% in 2006. It further indicated that nearly 12-million people currently receive social grants, and 3,2% of GDP is spent on social-grant assistance.

Facts
He said the information supplied in the review came from studies carried out by independent economists and institutions not connected to or commissioned by the government. The figures for the grants were drawn from the government social security pension system and the National Treasury.

"I mention these facts to emphasise the point that the Presidency did not falsify the figures about poverty, to hide our reality," Mbeki said.

Government programmes have focused on fighting poverty, and it is further refining its integrated offensive against poverty, reaching down to individual households, to improve the effectiveness of its work in this regard.

For its part, the official statistics agency, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), said poverty should be seen "in a broader perspective than merely the extent of low income or low expenditure in the country".

"It is seen here as the denial of opportunities and choices most basic to human development to lead a long, healthy, creative life and to enjoy a decent standard of living, freedom, dignity, self-esteem and respect from others," Stats SA said.

Mbeki said the SAIRR relies on a definition of poverty that is radically different from the one spelt out in the Reconstruction and Development Programme and described by Stats SA. "Necessarily, this produces a distortion of our reality which amounts to a falsification of this reality.

"The SAIRR has positioned itself as the liberal alternative to our movement. We must assume that because of this it is averse to using [other reliable] sources of information."

It could also have used the recently released Stats SA Community Survey 2007 more accurately to report on improvements in the standard of living of the masses of the people.

"Its obvious unwillingness to do any of these things, choosing instead to discover statistics that serve the political purpose of discrediting our movement and government, underlines the imperative that we must at all times stand ready to chain the canards," Mbeki said.

Reaction
In a statement later on Friday -- under the heading "The truth has prevailed" -- the SAIRR said recent data from the president's own office did, however, show an increase in the number of people living in poverty.

Regarding the charge of falsifying reality, the institute said the survey it published used several different definitions and sources of poverty.

On the measure of less than $1 a day, the data published by the institute found that the number of people living at this level of poverty increased from 1,9-million in 1996 to 4,2-million a decade later.

Other measures of poverty used in the survey included people living on R871 a month. Various living standard measures, income and expenditure measures were also reported.

"On the second charge that the notion that poverty has doubled is absurd, it is a simple reflection of the fact that the number of unemployed South Africans has doubled from two million to 4,2-million since 1996. This is reported in the same survey and almost exactly mirrors the increase in poverty figures.

"The president implies that other measures of poverty besides simple financial poverty need to be taken into account. The institute's survey does this in great detail."

The survey recorded large numerical increases in the number of households with access to various services. The success of this roll-out has been widely publicised by the institute, which is one of few organisations to go on record that service delivery has been successful.

Regarding Mbeki's charge that the SAIRR ignored data in the mid-term review, the institute said it had, in fact, in September, published that data in its monthly Fast Facts publication.

"While the president is correct that this shows a fall in the proportion of people living in poverty from 50,1% in 1993 to 43,2% in 2006, the actual numbers, however, show that the number of people living in poverty has gone up from 18,9-million people to 20,5-million people.

"This is significantly more than the 4,2-million people living in poverty, which is the figure that the president disputes."

Mbeki is correct in observing that average incomes have increased since 1994. This has largely been driven by sound economic growth and the prudent liberal fiscal and economic policies of his government.

However, not everyone has benefited equally from this growth. High levels of unemployment have left a large proportion of South Africans unable to participate in the growing economy. "Among that underclass, poverty levels remain high."

According to the institute's survey, that level of poverty had reached its peak in 2002 and since declined, because levels of unemployment stabilised and began to decline over the same period. The roll-out of social grants was another contributing factor to the decline.

"Despite the post-2002 decline, levels of poverty measured at less than $1 a day remain twice as high as they were 10 years ago," the SAIRR said.