Social Development South Africa

Poor may get the dole

2007-01-26T23:33:00.001-08:00

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.

Call for Campaign to Stem Tik Crisis

2007-01-20T08:08:00.000-08:00

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.

Poor finding gaps in state benefit system

2007-01-20T08:05:00.000-08:00

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.

R1m in Performance Bonuses Paid At Chaotic State Poverty Agency

2006-12-23T13:38:00.000-08:00

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".

Guilty public servants to face the music

2006-12-23T13:37:00.000-08:00

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.

Cabinet pours cold water on basic income grant

2006-12-23T13:36:00.000-08:00

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".

Vusimuzi plays vroom-vroom

2006-11-28T07:03:00.000-08:00

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.

Skweyiya sticks by his BIG guns

2006-11-20T23:33:00.000-08:00

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.

Foster families struggling to get grants

2006-11-18T08:06:00.000-08:00

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.

Making it BIG

2006-11-14T00:29:00.000-08:00

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.

Defying common sense

2006-11-10T15:29:00.000-08:00

The Public Protector's finding that Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya was not duly influenced in awarding a large government contract to an investment company defied common sense, the official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) said.

DA energy spokesperson Hendrik Schmidt said: "As with his earlier report on the Oilgate scandal, the Public Protector's findings are undermined by common sense. The practical implications of what is suggested in the report are simply not believable and, it appears, the logical follow-up questions were not asked."

Public Protector Lawrence Mushwana said an investigation by his office had found that a R65 000 interest-free loan paid by Fandi Majali, of Imvume Investments, to Skweyiya's wife for renovations on the couple's Waterkloof home did not influence the awarding of a multimillion-rand contract to a company partly owned by Imvume.

Schmidt said an example of illogicality was conflicting testimony from Skweyiya's wife and Imvume's Majali.

"Mrs Skweyiya claims that as of November 2003, after a bank loan was approved, she and her husband 'sincerely believed that the new bond money would be transferred into our account in time to pay the invoiced amount'."

According to her testimony, Schmidt reported, "she only phoned Mr Majali in December 2003 to ask for the loan after it became apparent the bank money would not be transferred in time. Logically, they could only have arrived at that conclusion after the loan was approved -- in November".

"However, according to the testimony of Mr Majali, he met Mrs Skweyiya in Paris in October 2003 where: 'she mentioned the possibility that she may require a short bridging loan, in an unspecified amount, to assist in the payment of certain home renovations'," reported Schmidt, who charged that someone was lying.

Either the minister's wife "sincerely believed" the bank loan was going to be sufficient in November, and only when it failed did she ask for a loan from Majali in December, or she was already asking for a loan in October, before the bank loan had been approved or possibly before the application was even made to the bank on 22 October. "Why would someone who 'sincerely believed' the bank was going to pay the money, ask for a loan?"

Schmidt asked: "If Mrs Skweyiya actually phoned Mr Majali for a loan before she applied to the bank, that fact would render the rest of her testimony invalid and raises the following questions: Why did the Public Protector not verify on what dates Mr Majali and Mrs Skweyiya were in Paris and why did he not interrogate this glaring contradiction?

"Another obvious point of contention is the Public Protector's finding that because the loan in question was supposedly organised by the minister's wife and without his knowledge the minister could not have put himself in a situation where he was susceptible to a possible conflict of interest. Common sense renders this unbelievable.

"If the testimony of both Mr and Ms Skweyiya is to be believed then Ms Skweyiya, in a desperate attempt to meet a significant financial deadline, organised a R65 000 loan, without ever telling her husband that she intended to do so, discussing its details, or indeed who it was from."

Schmidt asked: "Why did the Public Protector not ask this obvious question?"

Schmidt said the Public Protector's finding, that the minister failed to disclose the loan "is significant but in comparison to the more substantial charge, neither here nor there".

"As has been evidenced again and again this year every second person in public office seems to fail to comply with the requirement that personal interests be registered with Parliament. It is an ongoing problem that concerns all levels of administration in the African National Congress government. And, as with all those other breaches, it should be dealt with," said Schmidt.

"The real question, however, is whether Minister Skweyiya knew about the loan -- it seems implausible that he could not -- and, if he did, whether that exposed him to 'a situation involving the risk of conflict between his private interests and official responsibilities'" -- and the report does not seem to adequately address this key question."

Meanwhile, Freedom Front MP Willie Spies said it was significant that Skweyiya was indeed found guilty of contravening Parliament's ethics codes in that he did not declare the interest-free loan in the member's register.

He noted that the R65 000 payment was paid as an "interest-free" loan to contractors for the renovations. It came from a controversial R15-million advance the government fuel company PetroSA made in December 2003 to Imvume Investments.

The FF Plus last year revealed in Parliament that R65 000 was paid to Skweyiya's wife and a further R50 000 to Bonga Mlambo, the brother of Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, then Minerals and Energy Minister

Budget would have to double

2006-11-10T14:52:00.000-08:00

Welfare Minister Zola Skweyiya has rejected claims that the government is failing social services and questioned the credibility of the organisation that made the criticism.

Chairperson of the National Coalition of Social Services (Nacoss) Solly Mokgata claimed that social services are on the verge of collapse because they are not properly supported by the government.

He said several services might have to be discontinued because of poor government support and that talks with the government in the past five years had failed to improve the situation.

The coalition represents 3 600 organisations, including churches, that deliver social services across South Africa and in all communities.

They provide services to 11.5 million people every year, employ 26 000 full-time and 42 000 voluntary workers.

Nocass said their joint annual budget amounted to R1.3bn of which the government contributed less than 30% through subsidies.

The organisation said the government should contribute 75% in a fair system.

Organisations such as the National Council for Child and Family Care said their budget would double if they had to deliver services on the level that they were needed.

In his reaction, Skweyiya pointed out that the government spent more than R34bn in social grants every year.

He also referred to improved access to water, electricity and housing.

Mokgata said, however, that the government's attempts at poverty alleviation through social grants were nothing more than throwing money down a bottomless pit.

He said it did not help to lift people from poverty while not to providing funding for development programmes.

Nacoss said the social-services sector was severely hampered by the brain drain of social workers because they were not paid decent salaries.

Another underlying problem was the lack of a comprehensive social-service financing policy for South Africa.

At present, individual officials in provinces decided on how subsidies should be allocated.

Willem Botha of the Dutch Reformed Church's welfare action in the Free State said on Monday social services had reached the end of the road.

The fact that they were now turning to the media to address their problems "is a last-ditch attempt to prevent services from having to discontinue".

Nacoss cited the followed examples of the breakdown of social services:

non-governmental orphanages received a subsidy of R900 a child a month while it cost between R2 000 and R3 000 to take care of a child a month;
the cost of care for an elderly person was calculated for subsidy purposes to be R1 610 a month in 1997 and this figure had not been adapted since;
Pinetown Highway Children's Welfare in KwaZulu-Natal had lost 24 of their 26 social workers. They had 1 900 children in foster care and, if regular reports were not made to the courts, no foster care grants were paid out;
Rethabile Children's Home in Klerksdorp incurred an overdraft of R190 000 when the North West provincial government failed to pay subsidies for two months; and,
the Mpumalanga government was two months behind in payment of subsidies because of a lack of funds.

Social development department in the red again

2006-10-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

The provincial departments of social development have yet again failed to spend the entire budgets allocated to them. According to Trevor Manuel, the finance minister, they have spent only 14% of the 25% budget in the first quarter of this fiscal year.

The question which arises is why does underspending still exist when poverty persists with about half of the country's population living below the poverty line.

Financial experts says R1 520 can probably last the average South African like a week, but for a family of 18 people, it is their monthly income and getting by is hard, and yet there is spare cash at the provincial offices of social development.

Fred Mokoko, of the Gauteng social development, says they have spent just over 16% of their budget and the problem is that sometimes their partners on the ground do not get things done speedily, which causes the delay.

The Gauteng department of social development says it aims to spend about 47% of the 50% by the end of the second quarter. In the meantime, the poor masses of the country remain in squalor.

Development funds have been robbed

2006-10-17T23:16:00.000-07:00

The National Development Agency (NDA), which has been linked to misappropriation of funds, was undergoing change and vigilantly ensuring that corporate governance was adhered to, it said.

The agency said it had appointed a strong director of internal audit.

The NDA is allocated R100 million annually by the department of social development to make grants to civil society organisations to meet the developmental needs of poor communities.

In the annual report for 2005/06, published yesterday, the new chief executive, Godfrey Mokate, said the year represented the period of transformation for the organisation following a few years of turbulence and the lack of a chief executive until June last year.

"At the beginning of the year, the organisation faced a number of challenges which affected its ability to meet its mandate effectively," said Mokate.

Former chief executive Delani Mthembu resigned ahead of a disciplinary hearing over corruption and mismanagement of funds.

The auditor-general has given the NDA a qualified report, saying that during the audit of the agency reconciliations and testing of payments subsequent to its year-end, it was found that a material amount was misappropriated.

Sapa reports that R8.8 million was misappropriated from the NDA, according to a recent forensic audit.

Mthembu's resignation came after social development minister Zola Skweyiya suspended him, following the preliminary results of the audit.

Mokate said the agency had embarked on a transformation process that had enabled it to implement a new strategy aimed at ensuring that it continued to deliver. "This is a process that has only begun and will see the turnaround… over a period of time."

The annual report said the NDA board had approved funding for a total of 104 projects throughout the country, amounting to about R68.7 million, during 2005/06.

These would benefit 40 000 people directly and an estimated 156 000 indirectly.

A further 64 projects worth R43.6 million were approved through the programme formulation process, affecting 30 000 people directly and 122 000 indirectly.

Skweyiya said in the report: "My overwhelming sense is that the necessary institutional stability and effective governance to enable the NDA to deliver on its legislative mandate have been created. In addition, the role which the board has played… has had a very positive impact on the governance of and service delivery by the NDA."

Poverty is everywhere

2006-10-17T05:24:00.000-07:00

Twelve years after the demise of apartheid, poverty remains one of the main challenges facing South Africa -- although opinions vary about how widespread it is.

Poverty has increased in all the racial groups. A lot of people in each of the racial groups experience the same problems.

Absolute poverty is not as bad as it used to be under apartheid, but relative poverty between the rich and poor is increasing. This is worrying.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions links poverty to joblessness.

"Unemployment, whether you take the strict figure of 27 percent which excludes those too discouraged to look for work, or the more realistic expanded definition of 41 percent, is still far too high," Bheki Ntshalintshali, deputy general secretary of the organisation, told the South African Municipal Workers Union in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth this August.

"Too many of our families and communities suffer the misery of grinding poverty simply because there are no jobs to bring in money to put food on the table."

Social benefits, such as the 25-dollar grant that government allocates to needy children each month, are making a difference in the lives of the poor. But there are reservations on this score.

The problem is that people abuse the grant by buying alcohol with the money. Reliance on grants also kills initiative. They don't generate initiative to address poverty. It causes dependency syndrome.

Fly-by-night drug rehab centres

2006-10-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

The Central Drug Authority (CDA) is poised for a major crackdown on fly-by-night drug rehabilitation centres in a bid to ensure addicts have access to safe and effective treatment, according to government’s latest drug master plan.

The strategy is a blueprint for tackling SA’s drug problems. It aims to improve co-ordination between national departments and establishes community drug action committees to co-ordinate efforts between local antidrug campaigns.

On the treatment front, setting up a register of approved rehabilitation centres will be a top priority, according to CDA vice-chairman David Bayever.

“One of the biggest problems we have is rehabilitation centres: we’re not comfortable with some of the programmes we have seen, and we’re not comfortable with the facilities in general,” he said.

The plan requires provinces to devise their own “mini drug master plans” and report to the CDA quarterly. The CDA will report to Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya twice a year.

The drug authority does not yet have a dedicated budget, but has presented its business plan to the national treasury.

Children as young as 10 are using drugs. While alcohol and tobacco are the most commonly abused substances, many South Africans are also addicted to marijuana, a mixture of marijuana and mandrax, heroin, cocaine, and, increasingly, to methamphetamine, or tik.

Alcohol abuse is linked to half of all traffic accidents according to the report — costing the SA economy billions every year.

The next most costly drug is marijuana, used by an estimated 5,5-million people.

In line with global trends, methamphetamine abuse is the fastest-growing drug of choice among addicts seeking treatment: it is now the drug of choice for about 42% of patients seeking treatment in Cape Town, the centre of SA’s tik epidemic.

Heroin is the primary drug abused by between 9%-11% of patients in Gauteng, Cape Town and Mpumalanga.

The plan calls for more research into occupational groups at risk of drug abuse. “Artists and musicians require urgent support,” it says, noting that medical personnel, farm workers and long-distance truck drivers are also vulnerable to drug use.

Robbing the poor to help the rich

2006-10-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

Officials have stolen millions from the government’s National Development Agency (NDA), which distributes money to organisations that serve the poor. It has also been discovered that R7.5-million donated by the European Union for poverty relief was used for “ineligible expenditures”. The NDA is now liable to return this money to the EU.

Police have arrested a former accounts clerk at the NDA, Sheila O’Reilly, in connection with the theft of more than R3.6-million from the agency. Her bail hearing was postponed on Thursday. Police have seized a R1.4-million deposit on a house and R1-million paid on the sale of another house and held by transferring attorneys on her behalf. Also seized were a Toyota Hilux double-cab bakkie O’Reilly bought in March and a Land Rover she bought in April.

O’Reilly stands accused of depositing NDA funds into her own account, that of Kafihlwa Dube (whose relationship to her is unknown) and accounts of non-trading close corporations with fictitious addresses that the two allegedly controlled. Her bank accounts have been frozen.

The Auditor-General has given the NDA a qualified audit for the past financial year after an investigation found that a total of more than R26-million intended for the poor could not be accounted for. Further investigations have revealed that at least R8-million of this went into individuals’ pockets.

The Auditor-General also found the NDA overstated by more than R20-million the amount it had committed to fund poverty-relief projects.

Since its inception in 1998, the NDA has been plagued by financial scandals. In 2004 the then-CEO, Delani Mthembu, resigned amid allegations of corruption and mismanagement. The board was subsequently sacked and replaced by a new one, chaired by Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana. The first CEO, Thoahlane Thoahlane, also resigned after allegations of mismanagement.

In June last year, Godfrey Mokate, the former deputy director-general at the Department of Provincial and Local Government, was appointed as the CEO, with a mandate to turn around the agency’s fortunes.

Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya’s was aware of the Auditor-General’s findings on the NDA and was awaiting the results of the forensic investigation.

Hassen Lorgat, spokesman for the South African National NGO Coalition, said the corruption in the NDA was a blow to the non-governmental organisation sector.

“NGOs are closing their doors every week due to lack of funding. The NDA is there to ensure that poverty-relief projects get funds. Such corruption makes our lives even more difficult,” Lorgat said.

Pensioners abused by loan sharks

2006-10-03T02:27:00.000-07:00

South African pensioners are being financially abused by the loan sharks they approach for help between payouts, Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya revealed.

"They are often harassed at pay points by micro-loan sharks," Skweyiya told a Grandparents Day celebration in Katlehong, on the East Rand at the start of social development month.

"Some micro-loan companies are even accessing direct deductions from pensions," he said.

Other service providers were deducting from pensions the cost of food-parcels, funeral policies and other products.

A number of arrests has already been made in the Free State and the Eastern Cape, and the department was working with the National Credit Regulator and Special Investigation Unit to ensure even more prosecutions.

One million children falling through the cracks

2006-10-02T02:26:00.000-07:00

Up to a million children orphaned and made vulnerable by HIV and Aids in South Africa do not have their basic needs met.

The Starfish Greathearts Foundation has claimed the main charities that focus on supporting children orphaned by the pandemic were, at best, reaching 200 000 of the 1,2-million children in need.

"Between all of us we are probably reaching 200 000 children in South Africa," said spokesperson Joanne Sewell. "And just reaching that 200 000 is quite challenging."

This means that about one million children were "falling through the cracks".

Tracey Webster, the chief executive of the foundation, said: "We urgently need to look at how to scale up our response to absorb those orphans. They are not being supported in any ideal situation in terms of their education, health and accessing social grants."

Until now, there had been a piecemeal response to the orphan crisis. In addition to their basic needs being neglected, these children are exposed to economic, sexual, physical and emotional abuse.

The Aids Consortium, which represents 1 000 national affiliates, said that poverty left children "completely vulnerable to the evil intentions of 'sugar daddies' - older men who prey on such homes, offering food and money in exchange for sexual favours".

Webster said children sold drugs and alcohol, or were forced by their new care givers to work, to leave school, to contribute to households. "This shows that these children are surviving, but if you look at how, that is what's disturbing."

Webster said Starfish planned to train "surrogate mothers" working at community-based organisations (CBOs) to bring a sense of normalcy to these children's lives.

"Research shows that we'll never have enough money to build enough orphanages, given the enormity of the challenge. We are racing against time every day - people are dying and children are being orphaned."

In an ideal world, she said, the parents would be kept alive with antiretrovirals. But until then, communities and poor families are filling the gaps.

And even as underfunded and stressed NGOs and CBOs struggle to cope, the number of children in need grows.

The consortium equates the pandemic to a "9/11 every few days" with 1 000 new infections daily and 800 HIV deaths daily, leaving an entire generation of orphans in its wake.

The grim scenario that there could be a million children who are not only victims of the pandemic, but also of the social welfare system, does not even include the thousands of orphans who are still unidentified.

The government is struggling to keep up, and concedes that its reliance on the extended family system and community structures to care for orphans (and vulnerable children) is crumbling "due to the epidemic and poor economic conditions, reducing the pool of traditional care givers and the number of breadwinners", according to social development minister Zola Skweyiya.

NGOs and CBOs maintain that many vulnerable children are still unable to get benefits because they lack the necessary documentation or adults to lobby on their behalf.

Seven years in the making

2006-09-29T02:47:00.000-07:00

Seven years down the line, the elderly may finally see the Older Persons Bill being promulgated into law.

The Bill was tripped up by a legal technicality earlier this year and still needs to be signed by President Thabo Mbeki after it has been translated into all 11 official languages.

The Bill dates back to 1999 and is being seen as a document that will entrench the rights of the elderly in the legal system and shift the focus from the elderly being seen as “objects of welfare”.

This is according to Mary Turok, of the Age in Action advocacy and lobbying group, who believes the Bill heralds “a radical new approach to older persons”. She said the rights of the elderly had been “widely ignored and are even overlooked in the Constitution”.

Earlier this year the Bill could not be be passed by the National Council of Provinces because the national parliament had accidentally passed the wrong version of the Bill.

Thuli Mahlangu, the national director for care services to older persons in the Department of Social Development, said: “We want to start implementing the Bill next year, so we hope it will be promulgated by December so we can develop the regulations needed in time”.

Please sir, may we have some more?

2006-09-11T07:10:00.000-07:00

Note that welfare is called social development in South Afria. The unempleyed cannot get by on what the state doles out, but the Finance minister says there is no more money. It has all been spent on new fighters planes, submarines and warships that nobody needs. Not to mention presidential jets and retirement villas.

South Africa's welfare minister Zola Skweyiya wants bigger state grants to meet the growing needs of its poor, he said in an interview published on Sunday, possibly marking a shift from conservative spending policies.

Critics have frequently called for bigger state aid to the poor, after years of miniscule budget deficits and especially as the government rakes in billions of rand in revenue overruns.

But Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has said the government cannot afford to increase social security spending, as recent revenue surpluses may not be sustainable.

Skweyiya said the formula used to set social grants was outdated and he would discuss revising it with the Treasury.

"I know there is going to be a big fight with Treasury when I ask for a recalculation because it may mean more money for the beneficiaries or more people qualifying for grants. I want to ensure that the allocation of grants reflects the reality in the country," he said.

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has stressed tight spending as a means to spur investment and economic growth in the first 12 years of democracy and this year unveiled South Africa's lowest budget deficit in 25 years.

At the same time, officials have kept increases in social grants at the same pace as inflation, even as a huge HIV/Aids epidemic and widespread unemployment mean more South Africans depend on the state for survival.

Manuel said after presenting the latest budget in February that higher grants were a short-term solution and risked making it "a disincentive for many people to want to live off the sweat of their brow".

Their lucky number came up

2006-09-09T15:12:00.000-07:00

The national lottery is supposed to generate money for worthy causes. Details are now emerging about a murky deal to switch operators. Besides the stench of corruption, charities will now lose money as the new operator spends hundreds of millions on new infrastructure.

QUESTIONS have emerged over exactly how new lotto operator Gidani scooped incumbent Uthingo for the tender to operate the national lottery, given new revelations that people with ties to government are linked to the new consortium.

On Friday, it emerged that ANC national executive committee member Cyril Ramaphosa is linked to Gidani through a foundation that stands to benefit from the new lotto consortium, while businesswoman Thuthukile Mazibuko-Skweyiya, the wife of Social Welfare minister Zola Skweyiya was, until recently, an investor in the Gidani consortium.

These disclosures are particularly alarming given the scant detail from government over exactly how the decision to appoint Gidani was reached. Trade and Industry minister Mandisi Mpahlwa announced six weeks ago that Gidani had trumped Uthingo, but provided no reasons.

However, final negotiations are continuing behind closed doors to nail down the final contract between Gidani and government, expected to be finalised by the end of September. Greek lottery company Intralot is Gidani’s foreign partner.

The consortium is expected to make upwards of R40m profit a year — about 1% of the total revenue collected. But details over exactly who sits behind the shareholders of Gidani remain clouded in mystery, and allegations have arisen from sources that at least one member of the National Lottery Board (NLB) that recommended Gidani be picked had close links to the new consortium, and was eventually excluded from discussions.

Until recently, businesswoman Thuthukile Mazibuko-Skweyiya, the wife of Social Development minister Zola Skweyiya, was an investor in a company called Partnership Investments, which forms part of Gidani.

Skweyiya confirmed this, but said she quit last year "when I discovered that they were bidding" for the lotto. The involvement of someone like Skweyiya in a bid for the national lottery would have presented a conflict of interest, given government’s ultimate role in approving the choice of Gidani.

Ramaphosa confirmed that while he is not a personal shareholder, his company has a trust that is part of the new lotto consortium. It is understood that Ramaphosa’s involvement is through the Mabindu Business Development Trust which is linked to Intralot SA, the subsidiary of Gidani’s Greek partner Intralot. Ramaphosa is believed to be only a trustee.

Ramaphosa confirmed this, saying “I’m not a direct beneficiary of the trust, I have never been,” he said. However, Ramaphosa is also the chairman of cellphone company MTN, which partnered with another one of the losing bidders for the lotto licence.

Shareholders in Gidani include Salukazi Dakile-Hlongwane’s Nozala Investments, Ethan Dube’s Vunani Capital, and Bongani Khumalo’s Gravitas. The Congress of SA Trade Union’s (Cosatu) investment arm Kopano Ke Matla Investments, the SA National NGO Coalition and the National Organisation for the Blind are also part of the consortium.

Full details of Gidani’s shareholding are only expected to be revealed later, after the final contract is signed with government.

The final date for lotto bids was November 30. Records from the registrar of companies shows that seven of the eight Gidani directors were only appointed after November 23, seemingly at the last minute.

Question marks have also arisen over whether Gidani can get its network infrastructure operations up and running before April, when they are due to take over from Uthingo. Neither Gidani nor the NLB would disclose what infrastructure Gidani is planning to use, but sources indicate its network will rely on a hybrid network utilising cellular infrastructure. By contrast, Uthingo has been using dedicated bandwidth on the satellite radio hybrid network.

According to an IT specialist both technologies have pros and cons. Satellite technology is robust and stable, proven in extreme weather conditions. The downside is that it is costly. But it is unproven for the heavy volumes that would be required by the lottery system, and the bandwidth required would have to be shared with voice.

NLB would not comment on whether Gidani was considering taking over Uthingo’s current system. “IT technology changes so quickly, they (Gidani) may want to set up their own systems. The roll-out would probably be publicised by Gidani," he said.

It is understood that the tender process required Gidani to install an entirely new infrastructure, the cost of which could take several months to complete and run into the hundreds of millions of rand.

Gidani chairman Bongani Khumalo, declined to comment on how the consortium planned to proceed in terms of infrastructure should it secure the bid. Uthingo said it had not been approached by Gidani but that it took between six and eight months to set up its systems at considerable cost. In terms of the expiry of Uthingo’s licence, Gidani would have to take over the running of the lotto in April — a mere seven months away.

Intralot’s would not take questions on whether the Greek company had the capacity to operate the lotto, which requires more than 8,000 points of sale. Intralot is better known for providing lottery equipment and systems than actually operating lotteries.

$350 million just lying around in Cape Town

2006-09-08T07:02:00.000-07:00

The citizens of Cape Town might want to know where all of this money is. The central government say it's there but the city council has misplaced it.

All legal avenues are being investigated by the provincial Department of Social Development against the City of Cape Town to recover R2,5-million - meant for a poverty alleviation project - it claims is just "lying around".

MEC for Social Development Koleka Mqulwana said she was "angry" and "deeply disturbed" that the municipality had not spent the money which was committed to the city in February.

The money was transferred to the city as part of a memorandum of understanding signed between the city and the provincial government.

Mqulwana said on Tuesday: "I have instructed the department's legal team to look at how we can reclaim the money and invest it in other development projects."

Her department has also discovered that another project in Khayelitsha, which is run through a similar memorandum of understanding, is also struggling to operate due to a lack of action from the city.

"As a result, another stakeholder is threatening to withdraw from this project, which will seriously affect local beneficiaries," she said. "I am very angry. All of us would agree there is no way you can postpone fighting poverty … while people are suffering. We transferred the money to the city in February. The money is still lying there. I am really disturbed about this," she said.

The department uses local authorities as legal entities to transfer money to poverty alleviation projects. Mayoral committee member for finance Ian Nielsen said in reaction the matter was only brought to his attention on Tuesday.

"I have tried to follow it up. We are looking into the matter to see exactly what has happened and will give a substantive response to the MEC's comments as soon as we have the details," Nielsen said.

Guilty public servants getting off lightly

2006-09-05T15:30:00.000-07:00

Nearly 1 800 public servants found guilty of receiving social grants they were not entitled to are not being charged interest on repayments. They are not required to pay a fine and were given "extremely lenient" repayment plans. They also do not have to pay interest on stolen monies repaid.

The individuals, 1 792 in total, owed just under R11-million. They had all signed an acknowledgement of guilt. A total of 241 were employed by the South African Police Service.

The group includes 425 teachers, nine school principals, 29 education specialists and seven legal-support services personnel. The individuals are being protected, as the department requested their names be kept out of the media.

One person, who earned a salary of R91 278 per annum, was repaying an amount of R74 801 in R200 monthly instalments. It would take him 31 years and two months.

To date, two of the 1 792 individuals had repaid their debt in full. Thirty-five were required to make a once-off payment, but had not yet done so.

Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya will be asked why such long repayment periods have been granted, and why no fines were imposed, the DA said.

Skweyiya's office issued a statement denying it applied double standards in dealing with fraudulent public servants.

"We reaffirm our commitment to act swiftly and effectively against anyone who defrauds the system, whether they are public servants of not."

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