How To Defuse SA's Ticking Time Bomb

A basic income grant is a necessity, not a luxury, if the country is to avoid a social catastrophe for all its citizens – according to DA MP Karen Jooste

WHEN, IN MAY, THE ANC rejected a recommenda-tion that the Child Sup-port Grant be raised to match that of the food poverty line, DA MP Karen Jooste felt a surge of “ice cold hatred” for those voting against the proposal.

It was the third time that Parliament’s Appropriations Committee had decided against recommending the proposed social grants increase. A key reason given was that it would be “too much work” to amend the Appropriations bill. The child support grant stands at R400/ month while the food poverty line (FPL) is set at R441/month. The FPL is the rand value below which individuals are unable to buy or consume enough food to supply them with the minimum per-capita-per-day energy requirement for adequate health.

Jooste, who grew up in Kimberley and became an MP in 2014, representing Northern Cape, sees South Africa’s poverty levels as “a ticking time-bomb”. Governments, she says, either choose socio-economic policies that let people die, or that promote life. “The ANC government had chosen a set of unfair ‘let-die’ policies.”

A sociologist with an MA cum laude from the University of Stellenbosch, Jooste recently completed a paper, “New Socio-Economic Policy for South Africa that Promotes Life,” in which she advocates “cash transfers” as a socially just way to protect people from absolute poverty in a context of mass unemployment and extreme violence. In it she proposes a pilot study to test policies that would provide an equal basic level of social security for all. It also examines how a basic income disbursement should be financed in a time of dire economic conditions.