Poor may get the dole

January 23 2007
The country's poor may soon be placed on "the dole" in an effort to cut down poverty.

Briefing the media in Johannesburg on Monday after the ANC's three-day lekgotla, which was held over the weekend, party spoke person Smuts Ngonyama conceded that the basic income grant was discussed at the meeting, but said no decision was taken.

This means this would not form part of resolutions to be considered by the government. The ANC lekgotla has, in the past, sidestepped the issue of a basic income grant despite a strong lobby in its ranks for its introduction that believes it would hasten government's attempt to fight poverty.

Now, ANC branches might finally determine whether government should pay a basic income grant to the country's unemployed.

But when further questioned on the issue on Monday, Ngonyama said there was still an opportunity for the ANC's general membership to take a stand on the issue.

Ngonyama added that the basic income grant question might still be part of the ANC's discussion documents to be circulated to branches in the build-up to its elective conference in Limpopo in December.

ANC components, such as Cosatu and the South African Communist Party, have strongly supported the provision of the grant.

Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya said during a reply to a parliamentary question last November that he was in favour of a basic income grant. He qualified this as his "personal view together with a few comrades in the ANC" who believed that government should consider "something along the lines" of a basic grant because of the high level of unemployment and poverty in the country.

A number of opposition parties, including the DA, civil society organisations and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have also supported the idea.

In its lekgotla, the ANC also agreed that it needed to establish a broad front for development consisting of a variety of organisations, like the Mass Democratic Movement of the 1980s, as part of its effort to strengthen its fight against poverty.

Skweyiya had indicated in November last year that a clear decision on the basic income grant would be taken at the ANC's national conference later this year.

The voices calling for the grant are likely to grow, given the ANC's focus on fighting poverty, which was also highlighted as the party's main theme in a statement last week. The ANC also wants an increased and "comprehensive" effort by the government to combat crime in the country.

This issue also came top in the ANC lekgotla which is succeeded by the cabinet starting on Tuesday.

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Top post for dubious official

A SENIOR government official suspended by the Eastern Cape social development department amid allegations of corruption and bribery, has now been hired as the top man in charge of overseeing all social grants payments in the province.

The appointment, effective from January 1, has been condemned by watchdog bodies and some political parties.

Former social development department superintendent-general Khaliphile Mabhentsela quit under a cloud in 2005 after being suspended by Social Development MEC Thoko Xasa for alleged serious irregularities that took place under his leadership.

Charges against him included irregular appointments, corrupt practices, and bribery. The charges also led to Xasa suspending two other senior officials, chief financial officer Jackson Mbawuli and corporate services chief director Welile Payi.

However, Mabhentsela resigned before his disciplinary hearing took place.

South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) spokesman Luzuko Qina yesterday confirmed that Mabhentsela had been appointed as Eastern Cape acting regional executive manager.

Asked if Sassa knew that Mabhentsela had been suspended when they appointed him, Qina referred The Herald to Sassa national spokesman Paseka Letsatsi.

Letsatsi refused to comment, saying he needed time to do a thorough investigation. “I can‘t confirm or deny anything. This is a sensitive issue and in order to do justice to it, it‘s only fair that you give me an opportunity to probe it thoroughly.”

Attempts to get comment from Mabhentsela yesterday were unsuccessful.

However, social development spokesman Phumlani Mdolomba said that after Mabhentsela was suspended pending an investigation, he had brought an urgent application in the Bhisho High Court to be reinstated, but this had been dismissed.

Mdolomba said Mabentsela had resigned when his disciplinary hearing started. “He was not forced to leave the department. He voluntarily resigned.”

Mdolomba said he could not comment on Mabhentsela‘s appointment as Sassa was an independent entity. He said Sassa – which is contracted by the social development department to oversee the payments of social grants across the country – worked closely with the department but in his new position Mabhentsela would be accountable to Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya, not Xasa.

Payi and Mbawuli‘s services had been terminated, Mdolomba said.

Public Service Accountability Monitor researcher Chantelle de Nobrega, who works in the watchdog body‘s monitoring and research programme, said in terms of legislation governing public officials, if officials resigned after being charged with a disciplinary offence, they were deemed to have been dismissed, even if their resignation occurred before a hearing.

“Consequently, Mabhentsela must be deemed to have been dismissed.”

It was essential that Mabhentsela inspire confidence during this critical transition of the management of social grant disbursements from the provinces to this national body, she said.

Sassa should explain its justification for proceeding with the appointment, given his previous employment record.

DA social development spokesman Donald Smiles said it was very disappointing that Sassa had appointed someone who had resigned under controversial circumstances. However UDM spokesman Max Mhlathi said the party had no problem with the appointment as Mabhentsela had not been found guilty.

The suspension had been about holding him responsible for what Payi and Mbawuli had done. “I have no doubt Mabhentsela has the capability to do the job,” Mhlathi said.

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Call for Campaign to Stem Tik Crisis

January 15, 2007
The DA has urged Social Development Minister Zola Skwe-yiya to launch a national education campaign on the dangers of drug abuse.

This follows a Weekend Argus report that in some parts of Cape Town, up to 10% of pregnant mothers are addicted to the highly toxic tik (crystal meth).

A pilot study last year involving 100 mothers attending antenatal clinics in the Tygerberg area found that 10 of the women had used tik during their pregnancies.

According to Western Cape Health Department official Miranda Anthony, several hundred babies could have been born to tik-addicted mothers in the Tygerberg area in the past year.

The DA urged Skweyiya and his department to "urgently launch a national education programme to warn about the dangers of drugs abuse, particularly pregnant mothers".

The DA added that it would submit parliamentary questions to Skweyiya around whether current anti-drug campaigns have had any real impact.

"I am shocked that this country's drug problems are also affecting unborn children," DA MP Mike Waters said.

Researchers had found that the use of tik during pregnancy caused prenatal complications and increased rates of premature delivery, and altered neonatal behavioural patterns, including abnormal reflexes and extreme irritability among both babies and mothers, Anthony said.

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Poor finding gaps in state benefit system

POOR people are taking advantage of gaps in the state’s social grants system to use foster care and disability grants as a form of poverty relief, putting the system under pressure to cater for a wider population than intended, says research released yesterday by the social development department.

Poor families often claim the foster care grant for children who are older than 14.

A report on the incentive structure of the grants system suggested that there was some evidence of sick and disabled people declining to take their medication so they could remain entitled to disability grants.

However, the department found no evidence of this, including that teenage girls were getting pregnant in order to receive the R190-a-month child support grant. The department had promised it would review this grant if it found a link with teenage pregnancies.

The researchers found fewer than 5% of those claiming the child support grant were younger than 20, well below the 13% proportion of teenage mothers in the population as a whole. Also, teenage fertility rates did not seem to have risen since the child support grant was introduced in 1998.

About 11-million people, or 22% of SA’s population, receive some form of social assistance from the state, including more than 7-million children who benefit from the child support grant and more than 2-million who receive old age pensions.

The grants have been the fastest-growing category of government spending since 2001, and now cost the state more than R60bn annually, representing about 3,4% of SA’s gross domestic product.

The department commissioned the research in 2005 in response to concerns about possible unintended consequences of the system, which may create “perverse incentives” for people to change their behaviour in order to receive grants.

Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya said yesterday that the statistics provided little evidence of people changing their circumstances to obtain a disability grant. But, in some instances, the grant was used for poverty alleviation rather than to compensate people with disabilities.

“There are indications that even if people are unsuccessful on first application, they return with new ailments until such time as their applications are approved.”

Weaknesses in the system also meant temporary disability grants tended to continue being paid out indefinitely. The department is to address these weaknesses.

There was also no conclusive evidence that the foster care grant, which is R590 a month, was growing because of incentives. But Skweyiya said the cost of providing the foster care grant would continue to grow in the absence of other forms of income support for adoption and other kinship arrangements.

Skweyiya said foster child grant caseloads could rise if more families turned to the grants in the event of parents dying. The number of child support recipients has grown hugely as the grant has been extended to children up to the age of 14.

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R1m in Performance Bonuses Paid At Chaotic State Poverty Agency

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has slammed the payment of performance bonuses to National Development Agency (NDA) staff despite the financial mismanagement and alleged corruption in the organisation set up to fund poverty- alleviation projects.

Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya revealed in written replies to DA questions in Parliament this week that 110 NDA staff members were awarded performance bonuses totalling R1m in the 2005-06 financial year. DA social development spokesman Mike Waters said he would write to Skweyiya to ask him to insist that the NDA review the payment of these bonuses, which were made despite auditor-general Shauket Fakie's negative findings about the financial management of the organisation. Waters said Fakie's report indicated that the financing of NDA projects was in a state of "complete chaos, and possibly massive corruption".

"Finances were in such a state of disarray that it was impossible to say what had happened to much of the money destined for poverty allevia-tion projects, but the possibility of misappropriation of funds on a large scale cannot be excluded.

"A culture of rewarding fat-cat complacency among those who are tasked with uplifting the poor cannot be allowed to continue. It amounts to nothing less than corruption to pay bonuses to those who do not deserve them," he said.

Skweyiya's reply indicated that in the 2002-03 financial year, R785640 was paid out to all staff. Waters said this was a "scandal" as there had been no performance evaluation. In 2003 both former NDA CEO Delanie Mth-embu and chief operating officer Pule Zwane were charged with financial mismanagement. Skweyiya said the bonus payments had been made in terms of a "clearly defined and applied performance management system".

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Guilty public servants to face the music

The 12 387 public servants who were found guilty of illegally receiving social grants will not escape punishment, while 15.5 percent interest a year will be added to the outstanding debts they are paying back.

Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya said apart from being formally charged, those found guilty also faced internal disciplinary measures.

He said the SA Social Security Agency had already called on the department of public service and administration to assist with the process and premiers had been consulted on the best way to deal with the issue.

By October, 1 475 public servants had pleaded guilty to social grant fraud and were convicted and sentenced for fraudulently obtaining social grants, but their names could not be released.

"Apart from the criminal route, public servants involved in these matters need to face disciplinary action, and it is a confidential process where the rights of an employee must be observed," said Skweyiya.

He said so far only the Western Cape had finalised its 208 disciplinary matters, in which 4 people were dismissed, 174 received final written warnings and six had died.

By October 31, 3 901 public servants had signed formal acknowledgement of debts, which were enforceable in court if they defaulted on the promised payments.

Of this 1 123 were signed by public servants in Gauteng, 1 041 in KwaZulu-Natal and 463 in Mpumalanga.

Skweyiya said a "relatively small group" had only agreed to repay small amounts over long periods despite the fact that they were earning substantial salaries.

"Should a case arise where a public servant refuses to pay an indebted amount, the matter will be referred to the state attorney for legal action against such a debtor," said Skweyiya.

He said a special investigating unit had already identified a list of cases where it was establishing financial profiles of those involved to ensure that proper repayments were made according to what each debtor could afford.

Skweyiya said it was difficult to indicate the ranks of the officials involved, but most of them were junior employees within the public service.

He said the investigating unit had matched PERSAL information with the information on the social pensions database and discovered that public servants who were receiving social grants and their salaries came in above the means test.

The lowest salary range was R18 000 and the highest salary range was R167 217, while the amounts stolen ranged from R680 to R72 038.

Recently the department announced that 400 000 members of the public were suspected of illegally pocketing social grants and were under investigation.

It said that full-time syndicates which defrauded the social grant system.

Also, parents who registered their own children as foster children to access grants were also under scrutiny.

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Cabinet pours cold water on basic income grant

South Africa's Cabinet appears to have poured cold water on a basic income grant -- called for recently by Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya -- turning instead to ways to find "exit strategies" to reduce reliance on social grants.

In a statement on Thursday after a Cabinet meeting in Pretoria on Wednesday, Cabinet spokesperson Themba Maseko said the Cabinet had noted a proposal for linking social grants to poverty alleviation initiatives and other economic activities.

But it said the beneficiaries of social grants -- "most of whom are able-bodied individuals" -- would be given incentives linked to exit strategies.

"These would include skills development and participation in labour intensive programmes such as the extended public works programme."

A proposed model was referred to the social cluster ministers for further consideration "and development".

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Vusimuzi plays vroom-vroom

The department of social development's director-general, Vusimuzi Madonsela, may be Johannesburg's fastest driver, after being caught doing 228km/h. He's not the fastest in Gauteng - but he may lose his car.

On Sunday, less than 24 hours after Madonsela was captured on camera, a 32-year-old Ekurhuleni man was caught doing 259km/h on the N3 South near the Linksfield off-ramp. The speed limit on this stretch of highway is 120km/h.

Ekurhuleni metro police were able to flag the man down, but as they approached his vehicle, he sped off. The police gave chase but the man's BMW M3 was too fast for them.

"We stood no chance against that car," said Ekurhuleni metro police spokesperson Jimmy Maboko. "He just disappeared. Unfortunately for him, the officers had already captured his licence plate details, and with the help of the SAPS we were able to contact him and tell him that there was a warrant out for his arrest."

The man eventually turned himself over to the Edenvale police on Monday. He told them the alarm at his business at the Eastgate shopping centre had gone off and he was rushing to see what was happening.

He was expected to appear in court on Monday.

The fastest vehicle ever trapped in Ekurhuleni was a motorbike caught doing 284km/h last year. The rider was fined R100 000 by the Germiston magistrate's court. He paid R40 000 and the remaining R60 000 was conditionally suspended for five years.

Another speedster caught on the same stretch was a 22-year-old man who was doing 193km/h.

When metro police stopped him, he said he had "the runs" (diarrhoea) and that he was racing to the nearest rest stop. He was arrested and taken to the Edenvale police station. He appeared in court on Monday, along with another Ekurhuleni man who was caught doing the same speed.

Maboko said the 30-year-old was arrested after he crashed his BMW into a tree.

The incident happened after metro police had flagged him down. The man allegedly stopped, and as the officers approached his vehicle, he sped off.

"In addition to reckless and negligent driving, he was also charged with failing to observe an officer's instruction," Maboko said.

Meanwhile the Johannesburg metro police have warned motorists that they will continue to clamp down on speeding and drunken driving as the festive season approaches.

"In Johannesburg we are going to conduct 22- and 44-point roadblocks, which means that either 22 or 44 roads that are interlinked will have roadblocks. There will be no place to hide," said Johannesburg metro police spokesperson Wayne Minnaar.

He added that the police plan to confiscate Madonsela's top-of-the-range Mercedes-Benz SLK55 AMG sports car through the Asset Forfeiture Act.

He was trapped doing 228km/h in a 120km/h zone on the N1 between the Golden Highway and the Grasmere toll plaza.

After been photographed, Madonsela continued to race towards the toll plaza, but unbeknown to him, the metro police were hot on his trail. He was eventually caught as he slowed down to pay the toll fee.

"If it was not for the toll plaza, we would not have not caught him. We gave chase in one of our Jettas," Minnaar said.

Madonsela was arrested and granted R1 000 bail. He is expected to appear in court on Thursday.

Madonsela topped the previous high speed, recorded in Johannesburg last year. A driver of a BMW M3 was caught doing 212km/h.

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Skweyiya sticks by his BIG guns

South Africa's Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya has stuck by his call for a basic income grant in South Africa but he declined to attach a monthly figure that would apply.

Asked at a briefing whether he was personally thinking of a R100-a-month grant across the board, he joked that the media wanted to crucify him.

But he said that it was his personal view that such a grant should be paid out by the state but it would have to be discussed at the national conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) at the end of next year. It would also have to be canvassed with the ANC alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions -- which has always backed such a grant -- and the South African Communist Party.

He said he understood and sympathised with the point of view of people who said that the grant, aimed at the poor, should be given immediately.

Skweyiya recently said in Parliament that he was in favour of such a grant.

It is generally envisaged that this grant would be paid out to all adult South Africans -- and then retrieved from taxpayers. It has been strongly opposed by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel in the past.

But Skweyiya said on Monday: "I personally hope that we will come out with a clear-cut policy in December."

He was referring to the national conference of the ANC scheduled to take place in Limpopo in December 2007.

Meanwhile briefing notes indicated that South Africa now paid out child-support grants to 7,6-million children. The report said that four million children on the programme were under seven years' old and 3,6-million children were between seven and 14 years' old.

Four years ago the government extended the child-support grant to children between the ages of seven and 14 -- with a target of 3,2-million. "This has now been exceeded by 400 000," said the minister.

He reported that the Social Development and Home Affairs departments were working on ensuring that all eligible children "have the requisite documents to ensure that they access the child-support grant".

Meanwhile, about 400 000 recipients of social-welfare grants, the bulk of them recipients of child-care grants, were being investigated for alleged fraud and the vast majority of the people involved were not state employees, Skweyiya noted.

The minister noted that this figure included the 45 000 public servants who were being probed for misuse of the grants.

Most of the fraud detected so far was the alleged misuse of child-care grants where the recipients held other jobs or sources of income. The grant is earmarked for the poorest of the poor.

It was explained that the South African Revenue Service was not able to provide the social development department with the names on their database.

However, the department could provide the South African Revenue Service with information on the recipients of the grants which could be checked against their database.

Asked about the amount of money allegedly involved in the grant fraud, it was stressed that the 400 000 figure still had to be verified but a rough average figure for one grant -- an average of the various grants paid out by the state -- was about R430 a month. This translated into R172-million a month.

The Scorpions and the security services had been asked to investigate the alleged fraud.

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Foster families struggling to get grants

Zola Skweyiya, the social development minister, has called for citizens to open their homes to vulnerable children. In the Eastern Cape, some families and care centres that look after these children often end up in court trying to get their grants.

The Child Care Act provides for financial support to those who take vulnerable children into their homes.

Last year, children from Joza township in Grahamstown found a newborn baby abandoned on a dumpsite. Were it not for the Matiwane family that took her in, she may have died.

The Matiwanes are both unemployed. The department of social development is supposed to pay them R12-a-day placement of safety fee. But a year later, not a cent has been paid.

The Legal Resource Centre in Grahamstown is now fighting for over 50 families

“There is still a huge amount of stubbornness on behalf of the department to recognise the volume of the problem and to appropriately take steps to address it,” said Ruth Williams, of the centre.

The department, however, says that it is succeeding in fighting the litigations. “We are fighting these litigations and we can say that we are succeeding. In November last year, we had about 2 000 court cases in Port Elizabeth, but in October this year we have 12 cases,” said Phumlani Mdolomba, the spokesperson for the provincial social development department.

Last year, 11 000 people took the department to court and it has yet to win a case. An estimated R25 million has been awarded against the department in its court battles over welfare grants in the province this year.

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Making it BIG

JUST as we thought government had utterly rejected the idea of a basic income grant (BIG), Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya puts it right back on the table. Answering questions in Parliament last week, he indicated that government was working towards “something like” a BIG and he expressed his personal support for this. Next year’s ANC national policy conference would have to discuss the issue of income support for the poor, given that the economy would not create enough jobs for all in the next decade, he said.

It’s not at all clear from Skweyiya’s comments whether the grant he has in mind would work in the way the Congress of South African Trade Unions and others in the BIG coalition have long advocated, or the Democratic Alliance. Their notion, essentially, is that every man, woman and child would receive a grant of R100-R150 a month, with nonpoor people paying that back to the state, probably through the tax system.

The BIG coalition estimated a couple of years ago that the grant would cost the state R15bn-R32bn annually, on a net basis. Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, a fierce opponent of the BIG, has put a number of R90bn or more to the grant. And even though SA is running a balanced budget and might be able to afford the grant now, once introduced we would be stuck with it, in upturns and downturns.

SA already has the largest non-contributory social security system in the world. Pensions, disability, foster care and child support grants already reach 11-million people, or nearly a quarter of SA’s population and cost 3,4% of SA’s gross domestic product. Social security is the second-largest item in the national budget, behind education. We spend as much on grants as we do on police, prisons, justice and defence combined. So should we spend more? Manuel, and President Thabo Mbeki, have emphasised that government wants to slow growth in grants spending and spend more on education and investment to enhance the economy’s ability to grow and create jobs. There has long been an aversion to creating a “culture of dependency”.

But what to do about the fact that an estimated 23-million people live in poverty? Or that even though the economy is growing at a healthy pace and creating ever more jobs, even in the most optimistic scenarios we will still have millions of unemployed people 10 years hence? When Skweyiya says we have to relook at the issue, he has a point.

The current grant system targets those deemed to be vulnerable: the old, the sick and the children. But it offers nothing for working-age adults who have little chance of finding jobs. Government’s public-works programme is meant to target some of those people. But it reaches very few of them and at best has only a short-term impact. It’s also more costly and more complex to implement than just giving people grants, so there’s more wastage. More of each rand of grant money probably gets into poor people’s pockets than of each rand of public- works or infrastructure money.

So there is a strong case for just giving poor people the money, and letting them decide how to spend it. All the evidence is that the existing social grants have had a huge impact on curbing poverty, particularly in rural areas. And far from just creating dependency, grants are put to work for anything from paying school fees to funding small business ventures. Small as the amount might be, a BIG could give poor people in remote areas life chances they might not otherwise have: taxi fare to get to town to look for a job, for example, or nutrition that improves kids’ learning abilities or HIV-positive people’s survival chances.

Trouble is, if we go the route of a BIG, we are in a sense giving up on the economy’s ability to grow in a way that is fast enough and shared enough to cut poverty and create jobs for all. But against that, government could stop worrying about whether SA was getting the right kind of growth and could let the market prevail. Instead of wasting resources trying to manipulate patterns of economic growth and investment in supposedly job-creating directions, it could use the money for grants. SA’s tax burden is already too high, and we wouldn’t want to see the fiscus appropriate any more than it already does. But more grant spending might be a more efficient way of targeting poverty than many of government’s current spending plans.

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