Executive Summary

While some of South Africa‘s people live in prosperity and even opulence, for many millions of others, their daily lives are a constant struggle simply to stay alive.

The ability of South Africans born into poverty or disadvantage to use their talents and seize opportunities is compromised from the beginning of their lives, and continues to be undermined at every stage of their lives thereafter.  While a growing economy will help many of these people, there will always remain some who, for many different reasons, need the state’s assistance.

The DA will make a range of interventions available to individuals at every phase of their lives to allow them to overcome the specific problems that affect them and take advantage of an Open Opportunity Society for All. These policies will be aimed at facilitating, not directing, their activities, and at expanding choices rather than determining them.

Children

Children born into poverty must be able to access the food, health care and education they need to learn and grow.

The child support grant has given eight million children a far better start in life than they would otherwise have had, but children do not always benefit from it as they should. The DA will therefore expand the grant to cover children up to the age of 16. At the same time, we will combine the current straight cash transfer with requirements for a child’s guardian to take specific steps to further the child’s development. These steps would include immunisation, providing adequate food and health checkups and ensuring school attendance.

In addition, to give children a better start in life, the DA will target areas plagued by foetal alcohol syndrome, improve health interventions for babies and expand the school nutrition programme. The DA will develop a proactive and decisive response to our growing orphaned children crisis aimed at, as far as possible, allowing children to maintain relationships with their remaining family and their communities. These measures will include Orphaned Child Support Committees across the country to provide orphaned children with the practical help that will allow them to manage their circumstances successfully.

Finally, we will ensure that the requirements of special-needs learners are adequately met with a range of state-provided schooling options.

Teenagers and Young Adults

Teenagers and young adults must have support mechanisms available to them to help them to develop their talents and maximise their opportunities.

The DA will put in place a number of different programmes which will allow young South Africans, who would otherwise have few options open to them, to broaden their knowledge and learn marketable skills.

We will allow any South African citizen aged between 16 and 24 years of age to register either to perform voluntary community service in the public service (where they would work in schools, hospitals or local councils, for example), or in the SAPS or SANDF, where they will learn non-combative skills while helping to assure South Africa’s security and stability.

For both of these alternatives, the internship would last a year and a small stipend would be paid. Those who complete these training periods would either be absorbed into the permanent structures of the public service or would qualify for an opportunity voucher to further their careers.

The breakdown of social institutions in many parts of the country has left many young South Africans at risk of falling into a life of crime. The DA Youth Development Programme will empower unemployed youth who have been expelled or had brushes with the law to learn to use their talents to improve their lives.

The programme will consist of both a skills development and an on-the-job-learning component. Upon completion of the skills development component, trainees will be deployed to positions in both the public and private sector for a six month period of on-the-job-learning.

Finally, the DA will allow any young person who successfully completes matric, voluntary community service, volunteering at the SAPS or the SANDF or the Youth Development Programme to claim, on graduation, an opportunity voucher. This voucher will allow him or her to subsidise study costs or start a business.

To accompany these programmes, the DA will crack down hard on drug and alcohol abuse – a problem that leads many young South Africans to destroy their lives. Among other things, we will reinstate the narcotics bureau, triple the funding allocation to the central drug authority and tighten up on bail for drug offences.

Adults

Social grants exclude millions of South Africans who are of working age but who have no prospect of ever finding a gainful source of income. Adults who have been left behind need to be given the basic means to survive and make the most of their circumstances.

The DA will therefore make an Income Support and Unemployment Grant of R110 per month available to all South Africans earning below R46 000 per annum who do not receive another state grant (cross-referenced against SASSA records).

Potential recipients must have a valid ID document, and they must have a bank account to minimise administration costs.

Finally, we propose various steps to ensure both the well-being of beneficiaries of disability grants and the security of the system.

The Elderly

The elderly must have access to a support system which allows them to live in dignity once they are no longer able to support themselves.

The state old age pension (SOAP) is a life-line for many elderly South Africans. However, the means test, which is used to ensure that only the poorest receive it, is impractical and expensive and excludes many needy people who do not meet its requirements. The DA will therefore abolish the means test for the SOAP and provide a universal old age pension, available to all South Africans.
   
This policy will go hand-in-hand with our proposals for reform of the pension system for employed South Africans.

Millions of South Africans who are not eligible for a state pension, and have also not saved adequately for their retirement, face a perilous post-retirement future.

The government has proposed a National Social Security Fund (NSSF) entailing mandatory participation by all formal sector employees, with a wage subsidy to counteract the effect on low-income earners.

The DA fully supports the principle that individuals who are able to should be required to contribute to a retirement scheme. But South Africans must be able to benefit fully from the money they invest. A centralised fund will inevitably eliminate beneficiaries’ ability to choose and leave them extremely vulnerable if the scheme does not perform well.

The DA will automatically include all formal sector employees in a state savings vehicle, but will also give anyone who would like to opt out and join a private sector fund the opportunity to do so.

In addition, to cater specifically for people earning less than R60 000 a year, the DA will operate a low-cost state savings scheme to operate as a long-term savings vehicle for anyone who wants to be a member.

Many elderly South Africans do not have the specialised care that their frailty or poor health requires. Families and community structures could play a much more effective role in caring for their aged.

The DA will provide specialised funding for care facilities for elderly citizens who need this, but we will place the emphasis on subsidised meal schemes, community health care services and other schemes that allow the elderly to remain in their communities.

Current measures to protect the aged against abuse are inadequate. Among the measures we propose to tackle this situation are an office of the Human Rights Commissioner for the Aged within the existing Human Rights Commission, charged specifically with investigating complaints of abuse and conducting regular investigations of aged care facilities. 
 
Human Resources for Social Development

It is not possible to give any of these different groups of poor South Africans access to the opportunities the DA proposes unless we have enough people to administer grants and provide the services and support that are required. But astonishing vacancy levels for social workers and other staff in South Africa make this impossible.

The DA will establish two dedicated training colleges for social workers in each province within ten years. We will also facilitate more social work bursaries and  fully exploit the opportunities available to us to recruit social workers and other social development staff from the African continent and the rest of the world.

State funding to non-government organisations (NGOs) must also be responsibly and systematically increased to address the salary gap between social work practitioners in the public sector relative to those working in NPOs, and an independent enquiry must be conducted into the National Lottery to establish how its processes could be made more efficient.

In order to ensure that workers’ time is being used as efficiently as possible, the DA will rationalise and computerise grant payment systems, wherever possible. We will also introduce one-stop shops where South African citizens can go to have a wide range of processes completed.