Poverty Must Not Be Ignored
Friday, October 12, 2007
First, the concept of a government-wide programme to tackle poverty needs to be expanded to a nationwide programme to change the profiles of our poorest communities. Second, the engagement of business and other organs of civil society in a war on poverty needs to be actively encouraged. This must go beyond social investment. It must align funding with charter requirements, the active pursuit of “bottom of the pyramid” opportunities and with the government’s responsibility for governance, infrastructure provision and basic service delivery. Third, we need common goals and a shared framework. “I have a right to know” is the standard cry of citizens about state affairs and “I didn’t know”, is the classic defence of those who fail to respond to matters that time shows they should have acted on. Look at the coverage of the Pikoli affair for the former; ask middle-class people who lived through apartheid, and you will find the latter.
The trouble is that issues that challenge our well-being and shake society’s fabric often insinuate themselves into our lives and become accepted.
South Africa’s poverty and inequality are like that. We get used to living with 40 percent unemployment and half the people below the poverty line.
Many of us get by hardly detecting the impact at all. The poor live out of sight. The designation of 22 presidential poverty nodes in 2001 was an attempt to overcome that. But the approach has kept the problem out of sight for most citizens.
But this is something we ought to know about. The profiles of the poverty nodes prepared by the Business Trust show that 9.6 million people live in these areas.
More than 80 percent are below the household subsistence level; less than 20 percent of adults are in paid employment; and up to 80 percent have no water or electricity in their home. More than half the adults have no secondary schooling.
Behind the statistics, ordinary people live desperately difficult lives. Take Ma Dhlamini (65), who lives with her two daughters, a nephew and four grandchildren.
They all live on her old age grant of R820 a month and child grants of R190 a month each for two of her grandchildren. They survive on R1 200 a month, or R5 a person a day.
When we hear about people living on less than $1 (R6.84) a day, they are not in some far off land. They are our compatriots.
The national progress reported in economic development and social services masks the fact that areas are left behind. Notwithstanding improved chances of survival, mainly as a result of the expansion of welfare grants, life for the almost 10 million people in these areas remains a desperate grind for survival.
But knowing is not enough. Having the right to know carries a responsibility to act.
That responsibility goes beyond telling the government what to do. It needs an acceptance that building a prosperous nation will depend on an improvement in the lives of the poorest people. It cannot be done in isolation, nor can it be left to government on its own.
If we are to act together, three things need to change.
First, the concept of a government-wide programme to tackle poverty needs to be expanded to a nationwide programme to change the profiles of our poorest communities. Second, the engagement of business and other organs of civil society in a war on poverty needs to be actively encouraged. This must go beyond social investment. It must align funding with charter requirements, the active pursuit of “bottom of the pyramid” opportunities and with the government’s responsibility for governance, infrastructure provision and basic service delivery. Third, we need common goals and a shared framework.
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