Steven Friedman worm’s eye view Redistribution is not only a matter of what you do, but how you do it. Until this week, anyone who suggested that we could find a way of getting the affluent to contribute to the needs of the poor that would attract support from the government and official opposition would have seemed a bit odd. But that, in Johannesburg at any rate, is precisely what has happened. And with good reason, for the step and lifeline water tariff proposed by the African National Congress and endorsed by the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) mayoral candidate could well be a model for attempts to redress poverty and inequality in our divided society. The tariff proposal is simple: every household will receive 600 litres a month free – a concession worth R10,80 – after which unit costs rise as consumption rises so that the more you use, the more you pay. While everyone will receive the free allocation, it will clearly benefit the poor more than the wealthy. For the former, it will cover most or all monthly usage; for the latter only a tiny portion. Charging more per unit the more you use has the same effect.
But, as the DA’s Johannesburg reaction may suggest, it is a form of redistribution that is – in contrast to many of the other mechanisms on offer – likely to meet little resistance.
The reason? First, it is not punitive. It does not imply that some must pay others because they have sinned against them in the past. It is, rather, based on an appeal to a universal principle that none should be deprived of water because they cannot afford it and that it is fair that those who use more should pay more. The reaction confirms evidence from a focus group exercise conducted a few years ago in which non-blacks were asked if they would pay more for water to compensate for the sins of apartheid. Not only did they all refuse, but they responded with tirades against black people in which denunciations of affirmative action and “the culture of entitlement” were frequent themes. A while later they were asked if it was fair that people who used more water should pay more per unit so that the poor could gain access to it. Immediately they replied that it was. So people who denounced demands for them to pay for the past were happy to foot the bill for a principle such as access for all. The effect would be much the same – but change the rationale and resistance turns to acceptance.
This has implications well beyond water supply: there are many more issues on which redress for the poor can be defended by appealing to a general sense of fairness rather than asking people to admit they have sinned and need to atone. Why is it important to win the support of the affluent? Because we need both growth and redistribution and are more likely to have the former if those who own resources do not see the latter as an assault. While that may not be easy, the water example and response to it suggests that it may not be nearly as impossible as some claim: rephrasing the debate about poverty to stress the values we hold in common could ensure the opening up of important new avenues for progress against poverty. This approach clearly cannot be used for measures whose aim is racial redress rather than reducing poverty or income inequality. But, in a country in which inequality within racial groups is as great as that within society as a whole, it is surely time for us to stop lumping racial redress and poverty reduction together – and, where the latter is at issue, there is scope for persuading those who have to share with those who do not.
Second, the fact that everyone receives an initial free allotment might seem purely symbolic but may still be important. In other societies, social protection measures have proved most resilient when they have been extended to all. This is hardly surprising: everywhere, the poor are the politically weakest section of society whose voices are drowned out by those of the more organised classes. If everyone has a stake in, say, national health or free schooling, the organised will defend them. If only the poor are seen to benefit, the measures are likely to have few friends who matter.
The principle rarely works here: where public benefits are open to all, the middle class usually decides it can do better by using private services – health and education are key examples. But the water proposal suggests that where the better-off can be included in ways which do not compromise the needs of the poor, the opportunity should be taken. Even where the gains for the more affluent are largely symbolic, opposition could be substantially defused.
Finally, a strong feature of the proposal is that it does not, unlike many current attempts to aid the poor, require officials to work out who is eligible. Nor does it rely on a benefit that must be handed out to the poor. This makes it more likely that redistribution will be efficient – that it will reach those for whom it is meant. But almost as important is that it avoids the political pitfalls of other current formulae for addressing poverty: it does not demean the poor by forcing them to jump through hoops to prove their poverty – and it reduces fears among the affluent that concessions are not reaching the poor because they are intercepted by officials or politicians.
Again, the water plan suggests that there is considerable scope for looking at other anti-poverty measures which could similarly rely as little as possible on official discretion.
So, in a variety of ways, the water plan offers something of a model for government action against poverty. It suggests that, despite the reality of polarisation in this society, there are opportunities for consensus on redistribution that have been missed until now. The more plans are justified by principles to which all can subscribe without being seen to have been forced into an involuntary penance, the more they include everyone – at least in principle – and the less they rely on officials’ discretion, the more likely are they to elicit support – or at least avoid resistance – from the affluent, making it more likely that we can pursue redistribution and growth. So the tariff plan can become a watershed for action against poverty – if the lessons it suggests are taken seriously by policymakers and applied to other areas in which we urgently need to find ways of reducing poverty without needlessly prompting resistance from the better off.