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RIGHTS-SOUTH AFRICA: “No Reason for a Child to Go Hungry”

Moyiga Nduru

JOHANNESBURG, Feb 7 2007 (IPS) - “My child watches TV at the neighbours’ and wants me to buy him a toy car, a toy gun and a bar of chocolate being advertised. I can’t afford them,” said Sibongile Nkosi.

“We live from hand to mouth,” she said, as she took off a few minutes to speak with IPS. Nkosi makes a living by handing out advertisement brochures to passers-by at a shopping complex in Randburg, a middle-class suburb in South Africa’s commercial hub of Johannesburg.

Her child is one of the more than half of South Africa’s children (or 10 million of the country’s 18 million minors) who live in poverty, according to the Children’s Institute at the University of Cape Town.

In a survey, titled “The South African Child Gauge 2006”, released this week, the institute says the 10 million children live in households with a monthly income of 800 rand (about 110 dollars) or less.

“A country like South Africa is rich in resources, including human resources. There are enough resources to go around. The economy is booming. Business is doing well. So there’s no reason for a child to go hungry,” Lynne Cawood, director of Childline Gauteng, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Johannesburg, told IPS in an interview.

Lukholo Ngamlala, deputy coordinator at the Children’s Movement, an NGO based in Cape Town, accuses the government of losing sight of priorities. “The government organises lavish functions, some costing as much as R30,000 (about 2,200 dollars) a night, which could feed hundreds of hungry children,” he told IPS.

“There are children who have only one meal a day. A child needs three square meals a day. And those who don’t have square meals spend their time abusing drugs to reduce the pang of hunger,” he said.

South Africa is one of the few countries of the continent that provide basic income grants to its poor citizens.

Zola Skweyiya, minister of social development, told Parliament last year that the target of reaching 3.2 million poor children through the Child Support Grant had far exceeded the target. The grants now help more than seven million children.

“Research studies have consistently confirmed that these grants not only reduce the occurrence of hunger and extreme poverty, they facilitate household access to basic services and economic opportunities,” he said.

There is growing pressure on the government to extend the grant to include all those in need. Currently only children in poor households and disabled persons are eligible for the grants. Each child in the programme receives R190 (27 dollars) a month, according to figures provided by the department of social development.

“The basic income grant is back on the political agenda for discussion. The government may extend it to all needy South Africans – approximately R100 (14 dollars) a month. At the moment, the child support grant is provided until the age of 14. We are lobbying so that it’s extended to 18. We believe that this will have an impact on child poverty,” Childline Gluten’s Cawood said.

Ngamlala, of the Children’s Movement, is particularly concerned about South Africa’s 1.1 million AIDS orphans, some of whom carry the virus. “AIDS orphans need food in order to be able to take their ARVs (the life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs) as required by the doctor,” he said.

Some of the orphans head households and some live with their guardians. And this causes problems at times, “because the grants the guardians get, on behalf of these children, don’t reach some of the children,” he said.

The government says it is working to curb fraud in the grant programme. “Our… anti-fraud campaign, which has over the past year saved the state in excess of 400 million rand (56 million dollars), has laid a solid foundation for the work of the Social Security Agency. The National Prosecuting Authority has already prosecuted more than 500 of the more than 12,000 civil servants who we believe are either involved in corruption or are defrauding the social security system,” said Skweyiya.

Other campaigners, however, are fighting child poverty from a different angle. “If we change the life of women, it will have an impact on children,” Wendy Pekeur, general secretary of Sikhula Sonke, a Cape Town-based social movement, told IPS by phone. Sikhula Sonke means “we grow together” in the Khosa language.

“If we improve social conditions of women on the farms, for example, we would provide a safe place for children,” said Pekeur, who fights for the rights of rural women in South Africa’s Western Cape province.

Nkosi is less pessimistic about ending poverty in her life. “I think it will take decades for us to defeat poverty,” she said. Few in Alexandra, the poverty-stricken township in Johannesburg where she comes from, would argue.