Ferial Haffajee
‘We are not going to eradicate poverty in a decade,” says Minister of Welfare Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi. It’s a very new song she is singing.
Fraser-Moleketi is the young minister responsible for breathing life into what used to be a “by-the-way” ministry run by the National Party’s Abie Williams.
“This is a powerful ministry. It can make or break the country,” she says matter-of-factly. That’s because welfare is at the cutting edge of poverty alleviation – the social pensions she is responsible for support seven million people. Most old-age pensions keep entire families in food and basic needs.
Under her hand, Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel has had to cut a bigger slice of the national pie for welfare. It was one of the few budgets which grew this year. The combined national and provincial welfare departments received more than R200-million for this financial year. By the turn of the century, this will increase to R234-million.
With the additional revenue she will lead the search for a better way of catching the millions who live on the edge. Government gurus are investigating a social wage for the poor because they know welfare cannot reach everybody. It is a cross-sectoral plan which involves the departments of health, public works, welfare and transport. The social wage is part of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s plan to co-ordinate the work of different ministeries to make them more effective.
The social wage, says Fraser-Moleketi, will involve providing micro-credit (small loans) to the poorest of the poor, sustainable public-works programmes, food security, a provincial youth service to get young jobless people off the streets, and a national programme of skills training through joint programmes with business. It will also mean investigating cheaper and more efficient public transport systems in the rural areas.
The social wage is an idea gaining currency again – it was first raised in the Reconstruction and Development Programme, but was never really implemented by the government. It is likely to now be marketed by the government in order to yoke together a range of development projects.
“All government programmes are targeted towards poverty alleviation,” says Fraser-Moleketi. She acknowledges that things have taken longer than expected.
That’s because before she could tackle the problems of the poor, she’s had to engage in a huge ghost- busting exercise. Many dead people collect her pensions. Some of the living get double, even triple, grants, and backhanders paid to officials often buy a blind eye. Pensions are paid out after a means test, but often those who should fail and those with private pension payments receive government grants as well.
She inherited a system where fraud and mismanagement were rife. The department is in the throes of a two-year clean-up aimed at ensuring that only the legitimately needy get on to the welfare roll-call.
This has meant some provinces have ceased payments while they audit and clean out. Fraser-Moleketi says she has also had to make the politically difficult decision to cut apartheid’s state maintenance grants to (largely) coloured and white communities in order to pay R100-a-month per child to all parents in need.
The government also wants all those on the roll to have an identity document.
But these things are easier said than done, and many people have become unintended victims of change.