Over the past decade, and arguably since the dawn of democracy, SA has faced pressing challenges. Some of these have persisted over the years and continue to be a pressure point in the lives of many South Africans.
Some efforts have been made to address these issues, but they have had little to no effect due to various factors, ranging from declining economic growth to a dearth of investment and political uncertainty. With the gravity of the challenges we face as a country with the lockdowns and attempted insurgency, are there lessons we could learn from abroad in a bid to find solutions?
Many lessons can be learnt from our global counterparts through a comparative analysis, including Singapore, the Netherlands, Australia, Ireland and Peru. Most recently Chile experienced similar challenges to SA during the Estallido Nacional protests and has been more proactive at addressing them, or at least in engaging its citizens on the problem.
To fix the country the first issues that have to be dealt with simultaneously are poverty, social inequality and economic growth. These need to be managed and addressed in conjunction with each other to ensure that while dealing with inequality, economic growth is driven to ensure all South Africans are included.
Lessons can be learnt from several countries in South America in dealing with poverty, such as Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. Brazil under the leadership of Lula da Silva introduced a social welfare programme known as Bolsa Familia (family grant/allowance). It was a part of a network of assistance programmes aimed at addressing poverty and targeted impoverished families.
Bolsa Familia was a conditional social welfare programme that sought to address short-term poverty through direct social grants, and long-term poverty through human capital development in the form of education and skills development. One of the key conditions for recipients of this grant was that they had to ensure children attended school regularly and were vaccinated. In the event that a child missed school the family’s benefits from the programme were suspended.
In the first three years of the implementation of Bolsa Familia extreme poverty was reduced by 15% and, by supporting 13-million families the programme has had a long-term impact in the reduction of poverty. Though the programme has had its critics, it was largely effective in achieving its goal and has subsequently been copied by other countries, including Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico, which have run similar social welfare programmes that have delivered similar results.
Tackling the key issues facing SA would also require addressing sluggish economic growth and, critically, ensuring this growth is inclusive. One of the main benefits of inclusive economic growth would be the promotion of social stability, which is clearly a necessity considering the recent looting and the compounding effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on unemployment and poverty.
The Indlulamithi SA Scenarios 2030 team, led by Dr Ashghar Adelzadeh, director and chief economic modeller at Applied Development Research Solutions (ADRS), proposed a six-pillar policy bridge to drive SA’s economic recovery. These pillars include: macroeconomic policy reform, social policy reform, macroeconomic policy reform, trade and industry reform, private sector and international support, and provincial growth and development plans.
Continuous investment is required to support economic growth and serious commitment needs to be made in investing in infrastructure and leveraging public-private partnerships to make this happen. This would be key in attracting the kind of investment that can translate to job creation.
In the SA context economic growth alone is not enough to address poverty, and the government should consider implementing a conditions-based social welfare programme similar to Bolsa Familia. This should be done with a strategic view that seeks to break the cycle of poverty in the long term through the development of human capital (with the fourth industrial revolution in mind).
In addition to other social welfare programmes, a basic minimum income grant and inclusive economic growth, SA can to some degree recover ground lost against achieving its National Development Plan targets. However, it is equally important to note that success would be dependent on a number of integrated initiatives and reforms supported by a strong monitoring and evaluation process and adequate response procedure.
Ultimately what SA needs is a new social compact between the government, business, labour and civil society to steer the way forward and lead us into the future. A good point of departure for the social compact would be to start drawing insights from countries such as Ireland, Australia and Singapore on their respective social compacting processes and learnings.
A strategic and intentional approach with open engagement is needed now more than ever before.
• Ngcobo, a bulk logistics professional in the mining industry, is a member of the steering committee for the Indlulamithi SA Scenarios 2030 project.
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