On the issue of social grants, e-tolling and shoddy social delivery: The tendency to accept sub standard service permeates the delivery of services to the poor
Social grants are BIG business and you have never seen anything like it. Funeral, the loan sharks and retailers target these funds like hawks. Most even ensure that they are present at the payout points and grab their piece before the grant recipients even have a chance to touch their money.
It's not much money per individual for goodness sake but the volumes add up. According to the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) as at March 2011, 51% or 7,7 million beneficiaries receive their funds in cash. It is one of the most dehumanizing spectacle that happens every month without ceasing and you would not like your granny to experience it.
The banks have clearly failed to sort this issue out but I think expecting pensioners and the disabled to queue every month for a pittance is only acceptable to the poor who really have no choice.
Government should introduce a low fee cash card to pay out grants as a social service and as a taxpayer I would be happy to fund that. I think that we really have to look at ourselves and realize that although the poor will always be with us, they too aspire for the same comforts and conveniences that we demand. Government could also appoint creative banks such as Capitec to come up with creative solutions to this travesty. We surely cannot claim to believe in ubuntu while this goes on.
If Social Development Minister, Bathabile Dlamini, must do anything he must make it his responsibility to ensure that the poor who are predominantly black are treated with dignity and he must also remember these are the very people that queue up to vote.
If this were in the developed world, one would never hear the end of it but somehow we in Africa just seem to agree to be treated shabbily simply because we are used to it and desperate.
The tendency to accept sub standard treatment or service tends to permeate the delivery of services to the poor. In RDP housing the houses are shabby and small and yet we could adopt much cheaper and better technology from elsewhere to deliver quality houses.
I still don't understand why some of the low cost housing solutions that are very smart, cleaner and much cheaper to put up are not here yet or am I misinformed?. Well I guess I do know why, someone needs to get paid somewhere to make it happen.
Continually decisions that have a negative impact on the public are made by bureaucrats and I am glad we are starting to do something about it. The e-tolling fiasco is one of them. In my opinion that is an ill conceived and profiteering scam that must never be allowed. As citizens we must just not make it happen. In my opinion the minister of transport has really fumbled here and in a private company he would been fired by now but hey this is politics.
I applaud COSATU's approach to fight things head on and as private citizen, I will be there at the march against the rot evident in education, labour broking and e-tolling. This can only deepen democracy and the right of all citizens to have a say in those things that directly affect them.
The challenge we face in South Africa right now, despite lofty goals and endless socio-economic blueprints and speeches, is that this country is failing dismally to effectively manage the socio economic complexities of a developing community who are beginning to realize that they surely deserve a better environment. The tide is surely turning.
In my opinion we all need to insist that only qualified professionals manage the resources and the affairs of this country if we truly are too see a developed prosperous nation.
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." - Albert Einstein
Vince Musewe is an economist and you may contact him on [email protected]
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