Africa, Development & Aid, Education, Headlines, Health, Poverty & SDGs

South Africa’s Progress on MDGs Questioned

JOHANNESBURG, Sep 17 2010 (IPS) - With five years left till the Millennium Development Goals’ 2015 deadline, civil society groups say South Africa has made progress on some goals but regressed on others.

Pal Mfunzana’s sole source of income is a couple of corrugated tin shacks, indistinguishable from many others in Diepsloot, a deeply impoverished slum on the northern edge of Johannesburg.

She rents the dwellings to two tenants, bringing in enough money each month to put some food on the table but not enough to get her to the local clinic for diabetes medicine. Her swollen ankles are testament to her untreated condition, though Mfunzana said she sometimes self-medicates using sugar water.

Diepsloot was established in 1995 when government resettled people here from elsewhere in the city. Subsequent relocations as well as an influx of people desperate for housing has transformed it into a sprawling shantytown.

Its presence in the country’s – the continent’s – richest city serves as an unhappy indicator of continuing poverty in South Africa and the distance yet to be covered to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

These eight ambitious MDGs, adopted by all U.N. member states in 2000, aim to curb poverty, disease and gender inequality.

With five years to go till the deadline, heads of state are meeting at the United Nations on Sep. 20-22 to review progress towards the goals.

In an opinion piece that appeared in national newspapers on Sep. 17, South African president Jacob Zuma said the country has made headway on the goals and expects to meet all of them by 2015.

“The area in which we have been most successful is in facilitating universal access to primary education, a target which we reached before 2015 deadline,” Zuma said. “This demonstrates that we are on track to achieve or even exceed this MDG target.”

Zuma also said the government has halved the number of people living on less than a dollar a day, and has greatly improved access to healthcare. (The president will not attend the New York MDG review; his presence is required at a ruling party conference that may determine his political future.)

In general, the government has greatly expanded access to all sorts of services since 2000, said Jay Naidoo, Chairperson of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and a former minister in charge of the Reconstruction and Development Programme, South Africa’s initial strategy to overcome the unequal legacy of apartheid.

“In terms of access to education and health services and meeting the needs of people for water and electricity, we’ve done exceedingly well,” Naidoo said.

Quantity versus quality

But while access to public services has widely been increased, Naidoo said these services are typically underfunded or underperforming.

“A focus on access to health and education versus on quality of health and education is causing dramatic amount of conflict, anger and resentment,” Naidoo said. “We’ve made tremendous progress in access to education but most of our schools in rural areas are dysfunctional.”

Naidoo said this disparity is still evident in the difference in the quality of education in public schools in poor townships compared to those in areas previously reserved for whites.

“It’s not about access, it’s about the quality of education,” Naidoo said.

In Diepsloot, illiteracy is rampant among students who attend local public schools, said Amanda Blankfield, marketing manager for MaAfrika Tikkun, a local non-governmental organisation that manages Wings of Hope Community Centre. In addition to providing free lunches, food parcels and other services to the local community, the centre runs after-school programmes to help students with schoolwork.

“Schools are there, but they’re not built very well, teachers are not qualified and these poor kids are not getting an education,” Blankfield said, adding that she had seen students as old as twelve unable to read or do simple math.

Further obstacles

Besides education, health and unemployment remained concerns for civil society members towards meeting the MDGs.

One of the major issues holding the country back from reaching its goals is the unemployment rate, which currently hovers around 25 percent, said Elroy Paulus, an advocacy programme manager for human rights organisation the Black Sash.

“There is a huge hole in the economically viable population of South Africa,” Paulus said. “Among people older than 16 and under 65, [a large number of] those are chronically unemployed, or leave [the work force] to look after someone.”

Paulus said the country’s infant mortality rate has doubled since the goals were agreed upon, while total life expectancy has gone down.

“In terms of [child health] and [maternal health] we’ve actually regressed,” Paulus said.

The rising child and infant mortality rate may be the most difficult MDG to tackle, due to a lack of resources for mothers, said Watson Hamunakwadi, South Africa Coordinator for the Global Call to Action against Poverty.

“Mothers need to have the capacity to take care of themselves,” Hamunakwadi said. “Mothers need to have education to take care of themselves.”

Additionally, the first millennium goal, reducing extreme poverty by half, is an overarching challenge for achieving all the other MDGs, according to Hamunakwadi, and will make or break efforts to meet the other goals.

In working towards MDG One, the government has tended to overemphasise free access to social services and temporary employment, such as construction projects, as a way to alleviate poverty, Hamunakwadi said. But temporary jobs offer no trade skill that is marketable, offering little long-term economic impact.

Paulus said he disagrees with the government’s current progress report on reducing poverty.

“Certainly the government made progress on a few [goals],” Paulus said. “But to claim that they achieved halving poverty we find a bit disingenuous.”