The FACT SHEETS in this series have addressed many of the main debates concerning the introduction of a Basic Income Grant (BIG) in South Africa. We have shown how the BIG can be financed without too much strain on government's access to funds. We have shown that, far from perpetuating or introducing a dependency culture, a BIG can release poor and destitute people from their current dependency on others. We have highlighted the particular benefits of a BIG for children. We have shown how a BIG can be developmental in regenerating local economies and bringing them into the mainstream as contributors to the national economy and the country's tax base. We have shown how innovative ways are already being developed for effective delivery of all welfare payments; and how these mechanisms can be hastened by a policy decision to introduce a BIG.

But when all these technical arguments have been dealt with, the underlying question is what kind of society do we want for South Africa?

Do we want a society in which everyone is enabled to see a possible path out of poverty? In which people have control over even small resources upon which they can build? Do we want people to feel that our liberation has brought them some hope of managing to take themselves and their families out of poverty? Do we want people's' efforts to protect their families and build a career honestly to have a chance of bearing fruit? Do we want, in other words, all our people to know they are competent beings who are taken seriously as citizens, entitled to the rights, and capable of the responsibilities and benefits, of citizenship?

Or do we want a society in which some of our fellow-citizens inevitably struggle in vain to access the fruits of our liberation struggle? Do we want to live in a country where the rainbow youth have as little chance of accessing education as their parents, not because the state has not provided schools, but because the children cannot afford school fees or transport to school? Do we want a country in which millions find no satisfying way to contribute to our economy? Do we want millions to have no access to income other than by begging, borrowing or stealing? Should we continue to ask them to wait patiently while we find new ways to create jobs - a process that has so far eluded not only our government but governments across the globe especially in the face of the growing pressures inherent in the globalised search for cheaper production costs? What hope are we offering them that job creation initiatives will bear fruit before they and their offspring succumb to disease, malnutrition or hopelessness?

The Basic Income Grant is sometimes called a Citizens' Income, for the very reason that it embodies the right of all citizens to an economic stake in the economy. It is also sometimes called a Solidarity Grant because that suggests people with income recognise a responsibility to ensure that everyone has the means to survive. All these names for a BIG describe a society in which the human values of mutuality are woven into its spirit, its ethics and its practice.

Here is an interesting thought. Ask people anywhere in the world, including those suffering violent conflict, to draw a picture of their idea of security. Very few will draw guns and fences and razor-wire and watchdogs. Most will draw pictures of children playing together in open spaces, houses without locks, people walking at night, being able to be alone without fear. It is a common human aspiration to feel secure without protection, and to regard other people, familiar or stranger, as friendly. Contrast that with what we know about societies where poverty stalks the land.

When we consider the problems involved in the implementation of a BIG, we must consider the costs of not introducing it. Crime is the inevitable result of widespread poverty, especially destitution. No human being would watch their children starve if he or she could provide food even if that involved stealing or violence against a stranger. Crime and violence are a scourge upon the quality of life for all of us: we all live in fear of random assault. Crime and the need to protect ourselves against it costs our society billions of rands each year. Such 'security' takes up a growing proportion of our national income.

Crime also threatens our tourist industry, which is driving development in many parts of the country. It threatens our reputation internationally as a civilised country where people and their investments are safe. It fuels and entrenches the racist idea that Africa is a violent continent. Although this is grossly unfair - crime is a growing and endemic feature of society in all continents where poverty and inequality exist - it is a major factor in reinforcing 'Afropessimism'.

Second, our national economy cannot expand while some 40% of our people are effectively outside of it. Those people are unable to act as either producers or consumers. Without income, they cannot activate or upgrade their skills. They live with great deprivation and need, but they have no effective buying power. Our enterprises are seeking markets, but our people cannot buy from them. Our producers are limited in their ability to provide jobs by the inability of our own people to buy their output.

There are large areas in our country where the only available cash comes from pensions. Older people are supporting the young - not, as we used to assume, the other way round. Those pensions may just keep people alive; they cannot support an expanding economy. Only the top half of our population lives with the possibility of growth and wealth - so that is where investment happens.

This exclusion from our economy of about half our people is clearly a political danger as well as an economic and personal tragedy. It also acts as a brake on investment - from our own capital-owners as well as foreigners. No one wants to invest in a static economy or one in which there is a danger of rebellion by excluded people.

Third, we are eating the seed corn for future generations by depriving our children of the nutrition that builds healthy bodies and brains. Malnutrition stunts the brains of children for life, and lack of food saps their bodies' ability to build immunity. This is clearly vital in the face of the AIDS pandemic, since HIV-positive status leads rapidly to death through AIDS where immune systems have been weakened. At a wider level, we are saddling the next generation with an unimaginable and intractable legacy of ill-health. This will in later years add to the health care bill of the state.

Deeper than all this is the effect on communities and people's behaviour when there is desperate competition for scarce resources. The relatively strong cling to what little they have by exploiting and oppressing others more vulnerable. Worldwide we see women and children abused and neglected by men whose social and economic powerlessness finds dysfunctional revenge in humiliating others. Children grow up without food when they need it, without visible signs of love and support, and often bearing the brunt of the violent frustration of parents who cannot help them. We are all socialised in families, and we are producing a society in which millions of families are unable to meet their children's basic needs, physical and psychological.

The predictable result is lack of confidence and motivation, alienation from society, delinquency and mental illness. Poverty of this order is a prescription for a sick and violent society, reproduced over generations. International evidence confirms this diagnosis.

These are the facts and factors we need to consider when we say a BIG is 'unaffordable'. Everything is affordable if the alternative is worse. History is full of proof that when powerful people face an emergency, they implement the previously impossible. Once we are persuaded that today's poverty is intolerable, that the consequences of doing too little are unacceptable, and that a BIG is the most effective way to eliminate destitution, we will find the resources.

The next time you encounter a beggar or a poor person struggling to survive by offering a service you don't want, imagine that he or she is someone vulnerable that you know and love, someone who has fallen on hard times. Put your own child into that pleading face. Then try telling yourself that their welfare is not affordable, or that providing them with a basic income to address the worst destitution will encourage dependency on the state.

This fact sheet was prepared by Margaret Legum, author of It Doesn't Have to Be Like This: A New Economy for South Africa and the World