GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
18 March 2024
The R20 increase to the Social Relief of Distress grant, to R370 per month, is still less than half the amount of money adult South Africans need just to feed themselves, with nothing left over for things such as transport, electricity, toiletries or medicine.
On Saturday, the GOOD Party unveiled its election manifesto – under the theme, Stop the Suffering – placing the provision of a Basic Income Grant (BIG) of a minimum of R999 a month for all unemployed people front and centre because you can’t build a democracy on foundation of injustice.
Besides which, the Constitution provides that if the economy can’t provide for the basic needs of the people the State must do so. Social security is not a gift or a handout. It is an inalienable human right entrenched in our Bill of Rights.
Those who describe themselves as Constitutionalists cannot pick and choose which parts of the Bill of Rights to honour.
More than a year ago, when it was clear that South Africa’s economy was in a hole from which, at projected growth rates, it will take many years to reach the point of generating enough jobs to meet demand, GOOD procured professional economic and financial advice on the affordability of a BIG.
We asked the experts to answer two questions: Where could we find money in the economy to fund a BIG and, given that the State has calculated that the food poverty line is R760 a month, how much of a BIG could we afford.
That research informed the GOOD Campaign launched last year for an affordable GOOD Deal – a BIG pegged at R999. On Saturday the campaign was incorporated in the party’s election manifesto.
Implementing a BIG doesn’t mean giving up on the economy’s responsibility to create jobs. The economy needs to grow at five percent or more per annum, for several years, to begin to meet the needs of the people for jobs, but projected growth in the next several years is closer to 1%.
In the meantime, the nine million dependents on the Social Relief of Distress Grant need to eat. If they’re ever to find a job, they need to be clothed, and they need to afford transport to get to the interview…
GOOD’s research indicated that implementing a BIG of R999 a month would cost the fiscus about R110 Billion per annum. That’s about 4% of our proposed R2.37 trillion budget for 2024/25.
Here is how to fund it:
• Implement zero-based budgeting to eliminate waste, duplication and unnecessary spending. Zero based budgeting provides the opportunity to check allocative efficiencies. No delivery is as direct as giving a poor person money. The zero-based budgeting approach must engage the question of how the social return on grants might compare with the social return on currently funded programmes, with their risks of design failure, administrative waste, delays, corruption and the like.
• Eliminate corruption. Corruption steals directly from the poor. Between 2007 and 2019 the economy plummeted from a R252 Billion surplus to a R246 Billion deficit. Much of that approximately R500 Billion loss can be attributed to corruption and poor choices by political leaders.
• Review and restructure all three spheres of government: national, provincial and local. There is a great deal of structural inefficiency, and wastage, in the current number of government departments. Departmental mergers, and the conversion of some departments into programmes, are essential to generating savings as well as enhance impact.
• Earmark revenue: Revenue which stems from practises that are particularly detrimental to poorer households must be used to mitigate these impacts. We must use the funding recovered from crime and corruption, the Criminal Asset Recovery Account (CARA) and the Mineral and Petroleum Resource Royalties.
The fact is that there are no financial barriers to achieving a BIG.
The country has the means to alleviate the suffering of millions of South Africans who, through no fault of their own, are struggling to meet their most basic needs to survive.
The only barrier is political will.
Media Enquiries:
Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
Cell: 082 518 3264
Email: bretth@forgood.org.za
Janke Tolmay, GOOD Media Manager
Cell: 073 367 1223
Email: janke@forgood.org.za