Peter Dickson
Human rights lawyers in the Eastern Cape have lodged a landmark class action suit against the province’s government to force the reinstatement of more than 2E000 state disability grants that have been cut or gone unpaid since 1996.
If the high court action by the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) in Grahamstown succeeds, the Eastern Cape provincial government could be ordered to pay out more than R1-billion, setting a precedent for similar suits nationwide.
The lawsuit follows the release of a Human Rights Committee report on the provincial government’s socio-economic programmes, which said the suspension of 79E000 disability grants in the past two years had devastated the Eastern Cape, whose inhabitants are heavily dependent on grant money and where unemployment stands at 49%.
Thousands of clearly disabled people, at least seven of whom died last year alone, were declared fit to work under new welfare policy guidelines and their names removed from the grant register.
The LRC case follows a string of courtroom skirmishes in Grahamstown in which successive welfare MECs have run close to contempt in the past two years after failing to meet court-ordered pay- out deadlines for pensioners and other grant beneficiaries struck off the register or even declared dead. The LRC action is supported by affidavits from the Black Sash, renowned anti-apartheid campaigner Bishop David Russel, and Karin Claydon, a leading campaigner for the disabled.
The Human Rights Committee’s report says: ”In what has been described as the ‘silent genocide’ by Claydon, 85 000 grants were removed from the welfare system in the Eastern Cape by the end of 1997. This followed the combination of the three social security systems of the Transkei, Ciskei and Eastern Cape.
”According to Claydon, 14 000 of the grants that were discounted were found to be duplications and 5E000 child maintenance grants were stopped for children over 18.
”By simple arithmetic, one can calculate the loss to the Eastern Cape’s economy of spending power by the removal of the grants. The first wave of removals in 1997 of 85 000 grantees totals R34,9-million a month; the second wave of 22E000 removals in 1998 totals R11-million a month and the third wave, in progress, which affects 72E000 grantees, totals another R37,2- million a month,” the Human Rights Committee says.
Its report says 60% of grantees are based in rural areas that literally survive on welfare. ”Rural business survives on welfare money and the ripple effect back to retail, wholesale and industry is enormous.
”The multiple consequences arising out of the cutting of grants seemed not to have played a role when the policy was introduced. In the light of this, it is abundantly clear that there are a number of impediments to the realisation of social and economic rights.”
Claydon said this week media coverage of her campaign – including Mail & Guardian cuttings – had been included in the court papers to bolster the LRC’s case. ”If it [the lawsuit] succeeds, the class action suit will make legal history and pave the way for other provinces to follow suit.”
The attorney at the heart of the LRC case, Mark Owen, says the centre opted for class action out of necessity on behalf of another 2E000 disabled clients on its books whose grants have either been cancelled or gone unpaid since 1996.
Owen said this week the caseload, coupled with the provincial Department of Welfare’s reputation for not meeting even court- ordered deadlines, made for more streamlined and swifter litigation as a class action. The department was due to file answering papers this week.
Last year, then welfare MEC Nomsa Jajula had to pay out R189 000 in backpay alone to 40 pensioners represented by the LRC following court orders.
Claydon says the national government changed the rules for disablilty grants and due to ”resource constraints” cut provincial budgets. ”This province tightened its belt even further but never managed to work out what most hampers the delivery of social services – corruption or fraud. Central government has now ordered yet another re-registration purportedly for that reason.”
Claydon, who is also an Operation Hunger volunteer, says that 179 000 people previously classified as disabled, along with their families, may now starve. With one grant feeding at least five mouths and with extended families already stretched to the limit through unemployment, almost one million rural Eastern Cape people face being left without.
”It is a silent, passive condemnation to death, the genocide of the Eastern Cape’s disabled people,” Claydon says.