Basic income grant can help alleviate rampant unemployment and inhumane hunger
Mark Rountree, National Policy Officer for GOOD
14 July 2020
South Africa’s unemployment rate, especially for the youth, is astronomically high.
Social development Minister Lindiwe Zulu’s announcement that the South African government is considering a basic income grant is welcomed by GOOD. “We have been calling for the adoption of government grants to alleviate extreme poverty since GOOD was formed in early 2019” says Mark Rountree, the National Policy Officer for GOOD.
GOOD’s leader, Patricia de Lille, has been championing for a Basic Income Grant for several decades. Last year she said South Africa “could fund a universal income grant to alleviate the social and economic trauma of rampant unemployment and inhumane hunger using savings made from eliminating corruption.”
South Africa’s democratic governments have provided grants for children, the elderly and disabled, and that social support network is something all South Africans can be proud of. However, millions of South Africans remain unemployed and no just society should allow its citizens to starve.
GOOD supports the move towards a basic income grant.
Whilst we wholeheartedly welcome the discussion of this grant, the sources of funding to support it need to be scrutinized. We cannot steal from the future to pay for the present. During the Zuma administration, calls for “free” higher education were met by reducing the grants allocated to schools, housing, home electrification and city infrastructure. That is not a sustainable system to improve overall education standards.
“Minister Zulu’s suggestion that such a grant would be implemented incrementally seems a responsible and prudent approach given the limited funding available at present” said Rountree.
“Recovering money lost to corruption and wasteful expenditure, cutting bloated State Owned Enterprises and reducing the size of government would offer a few ‘good’ places to make the savings we need to afford the grant.”
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