stifling public voice
Peter Dickson
African National Congress legislators in the Eastern Cape have been crossing swords with one another over public hearings on the province’s embattled social welfare system.
The hearings are due to take place on Monday, but the 46 venues where the hearings will take place will only be announced on Friday.
Welfare campaigners said this week that the 11th hour announcement of the venues was a deliberate move to achieve minimum attendance, and turn the hearings – which are supposed to allow people to voice complaints and suggestions – into “public education” exercises.
Karin Claydon, a leading Eastern Cape welfare campaigner says the provincial legislature’s welfare standing committee, in particular chair Mike Basopu, has consistently opposed the idea of public hearings on the welfare system. Claydon says they have only taken place on the insistence of the public participation standing committee, chaired by former welfare MEC Trudy Thomas.
Says Claydon: “They [the welfare committee] have tried to block Thomas at every turn, especially Basopu, in trying to make these hearings less visible to the public.
“In November, Basopu deliberately misinformed SABC TV and e.tv that there would only be public education on the re- registration process.
“Thomas took a fall in December and while she was away recovering, they went ahead printing letters and posters advertising public education. Thomas has done her best to try and change this since her return, but the only word for it is sabotage.”
The hearings follow a public petition to the legislature signed by 300 people last November condemning the costly third re- registration of welfare grant beneficiaries in as many years.
Bisho has consistently argued that the re- registration is designed to cut out corruption among department officials and remove ghosts from the payroll.
Over the past three years in the Eastern Cape, thousands of beneficiaries have lost their old-age pensions and disability, child maintenance and foster care grants by chaotic re-registration drives, department corruption or incompetence. Six disabled people have died in the last year since their disability grants were withdrawn in terms of new government policy redefining illness categories.
The hearings will be the first in the province to give such people a voice.
Basopu also told the provincial media at the time that the public education exercise meant there would be no need for public hearings.
Claydon adds: “I cannot believe they have connived like this. What is so pathetic is that the public participation committee is wanting to make it work, but the very welfare committee itself is blocking it.
“The ANC is completely split right down the middle over this issue and this is the first time that this has happened. Basopu and the department would appear to be wanting to preserve jobs, because if the people are able to speak, those venues will be packed. But if in leaving it so late to announce them at a press conference planned for Friday, which means Saturday publication by the local media, which won’t be seen by everyone in time for Monday’s start, they can say `hey, check this out, there are no problems’ if no one pitches.”
Thomas, however, is insistent the hearings are a platform for “the people’s voice on welfare issues broadly, including pension problems”.
Basopu could not be reached for comment at the time of going to press this week.
l The Department of Health announced on January 5 that a study had shown the Eastern Cape to have the highest percentage of disabled people – 8,9% – with North-West province the least at 3,1%.
The study, however, did not include people with chronic diseases, terminally ill patients or those over 65 unless they were physically disabled.