ESSET’s Response to the 2013 National Budget Speech

The Ecumenical Service for Socio-Economic Transformation (ESSET), an independent ecumenical organization that works for social and economic justice, welcomes Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan’s unadventurous 2013 Budget speech which was presented yesterday amidst slow economic growth and huge budget deficit.

 As was the case with the President’s State of the Nation Address, the Minister had a gargantuan task of appeasing different stakeholders. Like President Zuma, the Minister used his speech as a platform to urge the South African public to work together. Thus, the Minister’s emphasis of the National Development Plan (NDP) as government’s point of departure allowed him to appeal to the agriculture, manufacturing, tourism and communications sectors to play a part in expanding trade, investment and job creation. He mentioned exactly what the ear would have wanted to hear: “This budget is intended to accelerate growth, expand investment, support economic development and confront poverty and inequality.”

ESSET noted with concern the news that the government spent R190 billion more than it received in the past financial year. It was neither surprising hearing Minister Gordhan conceding that the economic uncertainty will be with us for some time and calling for resilience as we front difficult economic times. It was only a matter of time before we could start to realise the consequence of the disruption of mining sector last year and its effects on export trade performance.

ESSET welcomes the allocation of infrastructure spend to the tune of R3.2 trillion over the three years to realise a strong network of economic infrastructure designed to support the country’s medium and long term economic and social objectives. It was encouraging hearing the Minister offering to do a breakdown of monthly expenditure and making the information available to the public. We are also glad that the Minister is aware that some parts of government struggle to spend their full infrastructure budgets; depriving communities a right to have their basic services. It would have been great to hear how government is capacitating the three tiers of government to spend the allocated amounts in various projects.

We welcome the introduction of policies to tackle youth unemployment, particularly youth employment tax incentives. Even such a small measure to boost the demand for youth employment can go a long way in helping them get experience and secure jobs eventually. However, we are concern of more resources being allocated to the existing expanded public-works programmes. The Minister announced that government intend increasing the budget from R1.7 billion in 2012/13 to R2.2 billion in 2015/16 for the programme. It’s a great concern if much budget is spent on temporary jobs instead of creating sustainable permanent jobs.

We also welcome Minister Gordhan’s call for us to unite as a nation and fight against corruption. Further, the report that National Treasury is currently scrutinising 76 business entities with contracts worth R8.4 billion and 216 cases being finalised is encouraging news on the war against corruption. However, it’s high time that the Minister becomes firmer on the clamping of corruption and ensuring that there is compliance by all in the government procurement and financial management systems. We need targets and timeframes on how we will effectively deal away with acts of corruption within the public sector.

ESSET strongly support interventions by government to support small and medium enterprises. We also agree that trade opportunities in the Asian and African continents needed to be explored. However, government need not give the trade opportunities only to big businesses and micro-businesses. It should consider extending the support and trade opportunities to even millions who live off the informal sector of our economy. Currently, many in the informal economy are doing cross-border trading and government can ensure that trade regulations are reviewed to permit trade friendly policies that enable regional integration.

We strongly oppose the proposal to use VAT to fund the National Health Insurance (NHI). We agree with NHI ideals which are noble, particularly the proposed plan to distribute financial and human resources equitably between the public and private health sectors because the current public healthcare system is largely ineffective and does not cater for the poorest of the poor communities. However, implementing NHI through increasing VAT is not the best route to take. Increased tax to fund NHI could be a severe blow in South Africa considering the rising fuel, wage and electricity prices pushing up inflation and negatively impacting on the poor.

Let's all stand up and put a stop to violence on women

As President Jacob Zuma lead the launch of the Stop Rape in Schools Campaign on Friday,  the Ecumenical Service for Socio-Economic Transformation (ESSET), could like to call on all the people of faith and all sectors of society to stand up and put a stop to the senseless rapes and cold-hearted murder of women and girls. It is worth mentioning that this campaign championed by Dept of Basic Education and Lead SA should not only be limited to raising awareness about rape, murder, the rights of women and girls but ought to a nationwide campaign that provide practical measures on how to put a stop to the scourge of rape.

 The 17 years old Anene Booysen’s murder on 02 February and Oscar Pistorius’s allege murder to his girlfriend (Reeva Steenkamp) on 14th February are the latest classic examples that reveal how serious the violence on women and girls has become in our nation. Anene Booysen from Bredasdorp outside Cape Town was gang raped and murdered; her throat slit and body mutilated by a broken bottle with parts of her intestines lying next to her in the dirt at a construction site whilst the recent publicised Olympian athlete’s murder case drew the whole world to marvel at our tolerance of violence on women.

Though, both cases are tragic, inhumane and shameful, perhaps it was what our country needed to realise the urgency with which sexual violence in our nation needs to be addressed and rid ourselves of a bad reputation tag as a hub of violent crime country. As a matter of fact, the level of violence on women in the country remains unacceptably high. The crime statistics for 2011/2012 released last September by Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa reflected 57,000 of rape reported incidents. The stats further highlighted that rape is still generally under-reported by victims. Many chose not to report their cases because often they would be re-traumatized by those who are supposed to protect them. They are usually subjected to secondary victimisation through delays in court processes, unavailability of magistrates and police’s incompetence to deal with sexual offenses cases.

ESSET believes that the escalating sexual offenses against women are a reflection of gaps that exist in not only our current legislation but also an indication of lack of political will in fighting it. We do not have public office bearers with the vigour and committed to addressing rape and gender violence. The 16 Days of Activism against the Abuse of Women and Children Campaign has been toothless in eradicating gender violence. The Ministry for Women, Children and People with Disability is also still new to effectively make an impact in dealing with the sexual crime on women and girls. 

Though patriarchy features prominently amongst causes of sexual violence, it is not the solitary basis to rape. The way we socialise our boy child as society plays a role on how they treat girls and women even when they are grown up men. Erosion of moral fibre and abandonment of faith principles in our communities has led to disrespectful tendencies on women. Perhaps one of the scriptures that we ought to meditate on as we seek to deal with the many causes of the scourge of rape is: 2 Chronicles 7:14; (if my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land). The sad reality is that sexual violence and abuse of women and girls is perpetrated by men in all class of society; from church ministers, teachers, public servants, thugs, miners, prominent sport personalities, celebrities etc.

ESSET views violence on women as sinful and therefore calls on the faith-based organisations and churches to make pronouncement against all forms of violence against women. Rape is evil and against God nature; therefore all of us should condemn it. As the church community who often press forgiveness upon survivors of violence, we should be careful not to subject them to secondary abuse. When we intervene in their cases, we need to handle them with extra sensitivity and objectivity and avoid contributing to their self-blame and putting more shame on them. Further, ESSET call on churches to take position with the survivors of violence and hold government accountable for its failures to deal decisively with violence against women. For we all know how the Lord has placed a distinct worth upon vulnerable groups of his time such as women.

ESSET’s response to the State of the Nation Address 2013

President Jacob Zuma’s fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA) presented last Thursday (14 February 2013) simply lacked inspiration. President Zuma missed the opportunity to use the occasion as platform to inspire confidence by providing the solutions to the many challenges confronting the nation. Instead, all he gave us was a bland version of previous SONAs, which provides no hope for our country.

At the close of the 53rd National Conference of the African National Congress held last December, the President declared that over the next five years, the ANC led- government will take decisive and resolute action to overcome the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment. Further, he had indicated that the year 2013 marked the beginning of the second phase transition, which will be focused on socio-economic transformation. However, in the SONA, the President mentioned nothing about the socio-economic transformation transition.

Having said this ESSET is also concerned that the President has based much focus of his solutions on the National Development Plan (NDP), which its effects could only be visible in the next 20 years. Something also confusing is the fact that the government introduced the New Growth Path last year but this season little is mentioned of it or how it would be paired with the NDP. He failed to clarify if the New Growth Path was still going to be pursued or it has been abandoned.

According to the President, the NDP is the focal solution to all the needs of our people from water provision, electricity, sanitation, jobs, housing, public transport, adequate nutrition, education, social protection, quality healthcare, recreation and a clean environment. Nevertheless, the President failed to use the SONA to sell the NDP and provide details of the strategy to implement it. The President further emphasised the need for all social actors, including business, labour and civil society, to work together to achieve the country’s objectives, especially the imperative to grow the economy in order to create 11-million jobs by 2030. This noble thought might be just one of the rhetoric’s as the President did not share light as to when and how this partnership would be facilitated.

 In relation to job creation, it is obvious that the government is not winning. Statistics South Africa’s (Stats SA) Quarterly Labour Force Survey revealed that employment figures fell sharply in January 2013 with about 68,000 jobs lost in the last three months of 2012. More job losses will mean more poverty and dependence on state grants. The President failed to announce progress on Youth Wage Subsidy, which has been a subject of discussion for years now. He desisted from providing details on the youth subsidy, only indicating that discussions in the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) has been concluded and that agreement has been reached on key principles.

 As much as we support the job creation strategy for youth employment, the Youth Wage Subsidy concept was flawed. ESSET’s concern about the implementation of the youth subsidy was that it would subsidize employers that lower the cost of hiring inexperienced and unskilled young people and lead businesses not only abandoning their social responsibility towards society but also giving them power to exploit labour practices.

 

In the centenary year of the racist 1913 Natives Land Act, we are glad that the President admitted that government have only distributed 8% of the 30% target of land redistribution for 2014 and conceded, “the willing buyer- willing seller principle has not been the best model to address the emotive subject of land reform. However, the President failed to provide a convincing model for faster land distribution as well as fresh ideas on how rural development programmes will be used to build social and economic infrastructure, skills development and the promotion of co-operatives, especially owned by rural women and youth empowerment for their sustainable livelihood.

Besides being reliant on infrastructure projects, big business and the Expanded Public Works Programmes for job creation, ESSET is also of the view that President Zuma should inspire government to look at promoting the productivity and growth of informal enterprises because their contributions to economic growth can be increased with the kinds of incentives that currently only formal enterprises get. Labour-intensive growth of informal enterprises is likely to create more jobs than capital-intensive growth of formal enterprises. It also costs much less to create jobs in the informal economy than in the formal economy.

ESSET welcome the President’s announcement that “education would be made an essential service”. Additionally, as much as we agree with him that decent salaries and conditions of service will play an important role in attracting, motivating and retaining skilled teachers, we believe that children have the right to education and should not be held ransom by teachers. We are also of the view that the President should hold the education ministers accountable; not only to ensure delivery of text books, building of schools, feeding schemes for poor schools etc. but also on addressing broader challenges experienced within the education system.

We welcome the President’s report that the capacity of the Special Investigating Unit has grown from 70 staff members to more than 600. Nonetheless, ESSET is disappointed at government’s sluggish measures to deal harshly with corruption within its institutions. Media reports regular covers corruption and financial irregularities by public servants; from those at lower level, senior managers and even public office bearers. For instance, the Auditor General earlier this year released a report, which revealed that eight of the national departments had spent at least R24.6 billion on consultants in the past three-year period. The President would have at least condemned this extravagant wasteful expenditure which had no value for money.

The current state of the economy, the ever-increasing job losses in various sectors, protests for services and better life for all should be indication to President Zuma to speed up services in his second term. At the ANC’s 53rd Conference, the President pronounced the key aspects of economic policy that would help deepen socio-economic transformation. It is high time that we begin to see these noble promises made at SONA translated into action.