Manuel will put meat on ANC’s poverty plans

from The Times

Xolani Xundu: Politics in Command

There are many ways of dying, as Zakes Mda reminds us in his novel of the same name.

Mda wrote the book in the years preceding South Africa’s first democratic elections, a time of heightened political violence that claimed the lives of many.

Not surprisingly, the book is about death and how people deal with it. The two main characters, Toloki and Noria, who have not seen each other since childhood, meet at the funeral of Noria’s son. Through loss and grief, they find love.

Mda ends his book on a positive note, with everyone looking forward to the fruits of freedom that will put an end to years of misery.

Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has a chance to continue giving hope to millions of South Africans fighting off another way of dying — from hunger and from poverty.

In spite of the visible advances made in delivering services to the poor (and the economic gains that have accrued to the black middle class since 1994), last year’s Statistics SA “Community Survey” shows that 11million of the estimated 49million people in South Africa rely on social grants for survival.

Unsustainable as this state of affairs is, it is necessary in the face of limited private-sector investment in labour-intensive projects.

Of the estimated 11million beneficiaries of social grants, 65 percent receive child support and 21 percent pensions.

Blacks constitute 90percent of all recipients.

The number of South Africans living in poverty is definitely greater than 11million because there are many who do not receive grants. And ours is a country with one of the fastest- growing wealth inequalities in the world, second only to Brazil’s.

Faced with this reality, the ANC conference in Polokwane mandated the government to come up with a comprehensive social security strategy to address poverty and inequalities, with the emphasis on investment in infrastructure, education and health.

We are told that when Manuel steps onto the podium in parliament today to elaborate on how the government will deal with these challenges, he will be dancing to the tune of the new ANC leadership.

What this implies is that Manuel and the current ANC leadership in the government do not necessarily agree with the party’s rank and file that poverty is a pressing issue. Such a conclusion ignores announcements by the government that it is creating a “war room” to deal with poverty.

It wants to drum into our heads that the current crop of government leaders does not agree that child-support grants should be gradually extended to children up to 18 years old.

We are told that these policies are “populist”. Manuel is advised to ignore them because they are from “populists” at Luthuli House, led by Jacob Zuma who, it is said, does not have any education, let alone the grasp of economic policy that is the domain of experts.

South Africans are made to believe that if the finance minister redirects resources to alleviate poverty, South Africa runs the risk of a budget deficit and this will be bad for its credit rating.

Trade union federation Cosatu observed correctly that the new- found advisers making these claims are “opportunistically trying to foist their own discredited right-wing policies on the government and [are] inciting it to defy the democratic will of the people”.

Manuel’s Budget has to put into operation projects to deal with issues detailed by President Thabo Mbeki in his state of the nation speech. This is what the budget has been meant to do since the ANC came to power.

First is ANC policy, which this time has re-energised the focus on poverty and related issues, then comes the state of the nation speech and then the budget statement. It has always been like that and it is not about to change now.