1 March 2004
Dear Friends:
Ten-year olds are in high demand in South Africa at the moment.
On my way to work a couple of weeks ago, I found myself in the
midst of a gaggle of youngsters, all sporting "Born in Freedom"
T-shirts. It took me a moment to figure out why, then I remembered
that it was the morning of the annual opening ceremony for the
Western Cape Provincial Parliament, across the street from our
offices.
Pre-teens had a role to play in this ceremony, just as they had
at the opening of the National Parliament a few days before, because
South Africa is preparing for the tenth anniversary of its democracy.
President Thabo Mbeki, has just announced that the nation's third
democratic national elections will take place on 14 April so that
the Presidential inauguration can occur on 27 April, South Africa's
"independence day.”
Anniversaries are a time to take stock. Late last year, the South
African Government published a review
of the progress achieved in overcoming the country's legacies
of racism and inequality over the past ten years. The record is
impressive in many respects. Nearly four million households have
gained access to clean water. The proportion of households with
access to electricity has jumped from 32 to 70 percent. Close
to two million households received subsidies to build their own
homes, and nearly five million acres of land have been redistributed.
The number of people receiving social grants (old age pensions,
child grants, etc.) has almost tripled from 2.6 million to 7 million
(out of a total population of 44.8 million).
However, much remains to be done. The past few months have seen
a frenzy of parliamentary activity as the government scrambles
to finalise legislation before the election. The deluge kept us
hopping, requiring us to make more submissions to parliamentary
committees than we had made during the previous two years! A few
of the most important pieces of legislation on which the South
African Council of Churches (SACC) has commented include:
- The Communal Land Rights Bill, which is intended
to enhance security of tenure for the millions of people who
live on land controlled by traditional authorities (sometimes
called tribal chiefs). Many of these people were forcibly removed
from land they owned and dumped in the countryside as part of
the former government's attempts to reserve urban areas for
white occupation. The Bill is extremely controversial because
it would do little to change the racial patterns of land ownership
in South Africa and because it seems likely to entrench unelected
traditional leaders' control over land allocation.
- The Social Assistance Bill, which will change
the way in which state grants are delivered to those eligible
for assistance. The Constitution guarantees everyone in South
Africa the right to social security, including appropriate social
assistance. The government has been considering ways of meeting
this obligation. An expert panel appointed to review the options
recommended the introduction of a universal income support grant—a
sort of guaranteed minimum income—known as the Basic Income
Grant. The SACC and many other civil society organisations have
endorsed this proposal as a way of addressing poverty and inequality,
stimulating local economic activity, and providing a modicum
of support for the millions of households with no stable source
of income given South Africa's alarmingly high rate of unemployment
(30-40 percent). Although the government says it is still considering
this option, it has decided, in the short term, to provide a
small grant to poor families with children under the age of
14.
- The Children's Bill, which would address
the needs of children, particularly those in especially vulnerable
circumstances (e.g., street children, orphans, and children
in care of the state), by providing greater coherence and co-ordination
in child protection services.
One of the major unfinished tasks of democratisation has to do
with Parliament's power over public spending and the national
budget. Although the Constitution gives Parliament the right to
amend laws that raise or spend public funds (quaintly termed "money
bills"), legislation is required to give concrete definition
to that right. Ten years on, that legislation has not been adopted,
so the Finance Minister (or the Secretary of the Treasury, in
U.S. terms) retains almost total control over the national purse
strings.
As a way of highlighting the lack of meaningful opportunities
for ordinary people to comment on the national budget and spending
priorities, the SACC, together with the main labour federation
(COSATU) and the national co-ordinating body of non-governmental
organisations (SANGOCO) have prepared an annual "People's
Budget" which is published at roughly the same time as the
national budget. The People's Budget critiques the government's
fiscal policy, identifies key programmes to combat poverty and
unemployment and recommends ways of financing new social spending.
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