The First Instance of Decentralised Social Policy Innovation in South Africa?
On the 11th of May, Western Cape MEC for Social Development Albert Fritz announced the planned initiation of a pilot ‘work-for-food' project to be rolled out in the Province from July 2012. As is the depressing norm in South Africa, the story was buried beneath headlines about corruption and the disgusting racist tweets made by two models. However, Fritz' announcement has the potential to have a tremendous impact on social policy development in South Africa, and thus warrants attention. Here's why.
In my previous blog post, I attempted to illuminate the argument that South African social policy has become passive and that it is relegating citizens to subjects. I used the case of Brazil as a comparison to show that they had achieved tremendous success in reducing poverty through the use of innovate social policies, while levels of poverty and inequality continue to rise in South Africa. The main causes of this deviation are the fact that Brazil emphasizes investment in the human capital of its impoverished citizens, and that it views them as partners with co-responsibilities, while South Africa does neither.
There are two main reasons why Brazil has been able to develop these successful programmes. The first is the highly competitive political system and the second is the context of decentralisation. Both of these factors spur competition between political parties and state and municipal governments. The Bolsa Família programme is a textbook case, as it grew from two very modest municipal pilot projects. The pilots were established during the same week in January 1995, under the direction of two different political parties.
The Bolsa Escola (School Grant) programme was launched in the Federal District of Brasilia by the Workers' Party (PT) Governor Cristovam Buarque, while the Governor of Campinas, José Roberto Magalhães Teixeira from the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), separately launched the Guaranteed Minimum Family Income Programme. By 2012, the seeds sown by these two Conditional Cash Transfer Programmes (CTPs) had grown exponentially into the Bolsa Família, which currently serves 45 million impoverished people and has managed to lift more than 5 million people out of poverty in only eight years.
It is plain to any observer that South African social policies do not operate within the same context of political competition and decentralisation. However, there is undoubtedly still space for innovation, and the announcement by the Western Cape Government may very well be the first example of such innovation. The programme aims to task able-bodied unemployed people between the ages of 17 and 45 with participating in work projects like the clearing of alien vegetation, cleaning up their communities and possibly starting vegetable gardens and assisting at soup kitchens.