Submission to the Department of Social Development
14 June 2002

Introduction

1. The South African Council of Churches (SACC) is the facilitating body for a fellowship of 24 Christian churches, together with one observer member and associated para-church organisations. Founded in 1968, the SACC includes among its members Protestant, Catholic, African Independent, and Pentecostal churches, representing the majority of Christians in South Africa. SACC members are committed to expressing jointly, through proclamation and programmes, the united witness of the church in South Africa, including matters of national debate.



2. The SACC welcomes the report of the Committee of Inquiry into a Comprehensive Social Security System for South Africa. We commend the Committee on a concise, wide-ranging and well-researched report. We appreciate especially the range of expertise on which the Committee drew, its openness to input from civil society, and the collegial manner in which Committee members approached their task.



3. We also applaud the government for publishing this document and for inviting public comment on it. The appointment of the Committee of Inquiry demonstrated the government's commitment to satisfying everyone's constitutional right to social security, including appropriate social assistance [sec. 27(1)(c)]. There must now be an open and broadly-participatory debate on recommendations of this expert panel so that they may be refined and implemented. This is a critical moment in our nation's transition from apartheid to democracy. Our success will ultimately be judged by our capacity to address the legacies of poverty, inequality and underdevelopment. Having completed much of the legislative reform necessary to ensure that all South Africans have the right to be free, we must now make certain that everyone has the means to be free.



4. Given the extensive range of issues which the Committee has covered in its report, the comparatively brief comment period and our own capacity constraints, we are unable to comment in detail on all of the Committee's recommendations. Instead, we limit our remarks to those areas where the SACC already has a clear policy position -- particularly with respect to a Basic Income Grant, health and HIV/AIDS issues, and land. However, many of the matters discussed in the report are of great concern to the SACC and its members. We trust that this will be but the first of a series of opportunities to comment on aspects of the Committee's research and recommendations. We therefore urge both the Department and the relevant legislative committees (at both national and provincial levels) to allocate time for further, focussed consultations with stakeholders on proposals clustering around specific themes or chapters in the report.

Comprehensive Social Protection Package

5. We fully support the Committee's view that the primary objective of national social development policy should be to provide a comprehensive social protection package to all in South Africa, rather than just a narrowly-defined system of social security. This is consistent with the call made by SACC members at its triennial national conference in August 2001 for the establishment of more just economic systems to address the alarming levels of poverty and inequality in South Africa and other SADC nations. While social grants will continue to form a central component of a social protection package, we share the Committee's assessment of the need to address poverty holistically. This imperative underscores the need to develop and implement programmes to counter capability poverty, asset poverty, special needs and social insurance.



6. The primary function of a comprehensive social protection package should be to eradicate extreme poverty and enable all in South Africa to live with dignity. However, given the legacies of inequality inherited from the apartheid era, the introduction of a comprehensive social protection package should also play a redistributive role. Properly formulated and financed, this package can also become a central component of a programme of general reparations, as recommended by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Income Poverty

7. The Committee concludes that the introduction of a Basic Income Grant (BIG) is the single most effective and rapid way of combatting income poverty and of plugging the gaping holes in South Africa's present social security system. The present system does have the capacity to deliver benefits to at least 1.2 million eligible children who are not yet receiving the Child Support Grant; churches have responded positively to President Mbeki's call to facilitate the identification and registration of potential beneficiaries. However, research commissioned by the Committee indicates that a BIG would close the poverty gap by as much as 74 per cent -- more than twice the closure that could be achieved under the current system, even with full take-up or existing grants. Moreover, their findings show that such a grant is an affordable option, provided a substantial proportion of the grant could be recovered through progressive taxation.



8. SACC members have given strong support to the idea of a BIG. The triennial national conference of the SACC adopted a resolution calling for the introduction of a BIG of not less than R100 a month, payable through public institutions and recovered, in part, through taxation. The SACC is also a charter member of the BIG Coalition, a national network of church, labour, and community organisations committed to the implementation of a BIG. We support the position of the BIG Coalition, which is expressed in greater detail in a separate submission.



9. Given the special priority that the Constitution assigns to meeting the basic needs of children, we agree with the Committee's recommendation that any phased approach to the implementation of the grant should begin with the extension of a income grant to all children, without means testing. Many details of implementation still need to be worked out, and many additional issues will arise as the delivery apparatus is put into place. This initial phase should be seen as "trial run" for the BIG that would allow government to establish and fine tune certain aspects of the registration, delivery, administration and financing mechanisms associated with the introduction of a universal grant. It will be important for there to be regular and meaningful consultation with all stakeholders during this period to enable problems to be identified and resolved.



10. We wish to emphasise, however, that the extension of the existing grant programme should not stop with children. There are two compelling reasons why a universal children's grant alone would constitute an inadequate long-term response to poverty in South Africa. First, poorer households that lack access to other sources of income will inevitably use the grant to support all members of the household. Children will therefore not realise the full benefit of the grant until other members of the household have access to a BIG. Second, children represent only one of several vulnerable or destitute groups that the Committee correctly asserts should gain access to social security (and, indeed, comprehensive social protection) as an urgent priority. Other groups include women, rural dwellers, the differently-abled, refugees and asylum-seekers and unemployed/underemployed or unemployable adults. Many individuals in these categories currently have little or no access to social grants. Full implementation of the BIG is essential to address income poverty among these groups.

Capability poverty

11. The Committee rightly points out that programmes focussed narrowly on income poverty will have limited impact if these are not balanced with measures to address other manifestations of poverty. Otherwise, households will be put in the unacceptable position of having to meet some basic needs at the expense of others (for example, sacrificing education in order to purchase sufficient clean water). It therefore recommends that government undertake simultaneous initiatives to ensure that all households have access to free basic services including lifeline water, sanitation, and electricity; health care and education as well as improved access to jobs and skills training and affordable housing and public transport.



12. The SACC national conference made a particular call for the provision of adequate health care to all South Africans in the context of a resolution identifying ways in which all stakeholders could intensify their responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In addition, the SACC has been one of the architects of the annual People's Budget, which has emphasised the need for provision of free basic services, education and public health and has explored ways of financing increased expenditure in these areas.



13. We are pleased by the fact that the Committee's report devotes a separate chapter to issues pertaining to the protection of children. Both morally and constitutionally, it is essential to pay particular attention to the special needs of children. However, this section of the report focuses largely on matters related to the configuration and delivery of social grants. Much less attention is given to capability poverty concerns. In the context of the Committee's call to ensure free access to primary and secondary education, we are especially pained to find that in many areas of the country, learners living with HIV continue to be excluded from some schools. We believe that this issue should be highlighted in the report (e.g., section 7.4.1.3) and that the Department should work closely with the Department of Education and relevant civil society groups to resolve this problem as a matter of urgency.



14. We applaud the Committee's support for the reform of the health system in order to ensure that all South Africans have access to adequate care. The HIV/AIDS pandemic will not only increase the need for an efficient, adequately-resourced and accessible health system, it will also enhance the importance of ensuring that the system is capable of delivering quality care to poorer communities that are most vulnerable to infection. The People's Budget has expressed our concerns about the dualistic nature of the present system of health care in the country and has articulated proposals for a transition to a single, integrated health system. While the implementation of a unitary system of care would not preclude the use of multiple risk-pooling and financing mechanisms, we believe that the further consultation recommended by the Committee is essential to ensure that those who cannot afford high health care costs or insurance premiums are not expected to accept a lower standard of care.

Asset poverty

15. We strongly endorse the Committee's view that an effective Comprehensive Social Protection package must include measures to address asset poverty, in particular by improving the access of poor households to land and credit. Unfortunately, the Committee's report does not examine specific mechanisms to achieve this objective. A national indaba on land, convened by the SACC and the National Land Committee in December 2001 developed a range of recommendations intended to improve access to land, particularly within poorer households. In addition, this year's People's Budget document includes a preliminary discussion of some of the mechanisms and costs associated with improved access to land. Our experiences with residents of informal settlements underscore the further need for better access to credit for housing, in particular. We believe it is essential for the Department to work with other agencies and stakeholders to promote the establishment of an effective mechanism to monitor the land reform process and to put in place consultative structures to guide and assess progress toward these goals.

Conclusion

16. The litmus test of the morality of any society is how it provides for its most vulnerable members. In the last eight years, we have made remarkable strides in transforming the legal foundations of our nation. Now the challenge before us is to deliver resources and services in a manner that demonstrates our commitment to these new priorities. The Committee of Inquiry has developed a valuable framework for coordinating and evaluating progress toward a more humane system of comprehensive social protection, consistent with the principles of social justice underpinning our Constitution. Although this inquiry was initiated under the auspices of the Department of Social Development, it has far-reaching implications for a wide range of government agencies, particularly those within the social cluster. We greatly appreciate the leadership which the Minister and departmental officials have shown to date in ensuring that these fundamental issues are placed squarely on the national agenda. We hope, therefore, that the Minister and the Department will use the Committee's report to launch an inclusive and continuing discussion of the issues and proposals raised therein. In particular, we urge the Department to identify structures responsible for monitoring and assessing progress in developing and implementing the Committee's recommendations, for facilitating consultation, and for making certain that specific proposals receive further consideration by appropriate inter-departmental bodies.