Date: 17/10/2003
Source: Department of Social Development
Title: Madonsela: Social investment summit
OPENING ADDRESS BY MR VUSI MADONSELA, DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, ON OCCASION OF THE BUSINESS SUMMIT/CSI FORUM 2003: THE INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR ERADICATION OF POVERTY, Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, 17 October 2003
Salutations
Programme Director
Distinguished guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
On this historic occasion of the Business Summit/Corporate Social Investment Forum, I bring you warm and hearty greetings from the Minister for Social Development, Dr Zola Skweyiya, Members of the Executive Council for Social Development in the provinces, the Heads of Social Development, Senior Managers and the entire staff of Social Development, in their various formations, branches Chief Directorates and programmes, wherever they are to be found, across the length and breadth of our country, starting from the Beit Bridge in Limpopo in the North, down to Cape Point in the South.
As for myself, I wish to, as I now do, convey my profound thanks and heartfelt gratitude to the organising team of this function for inviting me to participate in these proceedings today. I must, at once, confess myself most sincerely flattered and, indeed, singularly privileged, to have been asked to deliver an opening address at this function, to an audience as illustrious as yourselves.
The fact that this Business Summit/Corporate Social Investment Forum 2003, under theme "Poverty eradication and social development effective public private partnerships" takes place on 17 October is a matter of historical significance. It is so because October 17 has been determined by the United Nations to be the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. 17 October 2003, therefore, presents us with a watershed opportunity launch a formidable spring offensive against unemployment, social exclusion and poverty. This Business Summit/Corporate Social Investment Forum 2003, today, therefore, marks an important epochal change in the country's fight against poverty in that it unites two previously separate initiatives, on the one hand, the Corporate Social Investment Forum initiative which was established three years ago and, on the other, the Business Summit initiative launched by Minister Skweyiya two years ago, under the distinguished patronage of Messrs Cyril Ramaphosa and Raymond Ackerman. The organisers of function deemed it necessary and fitting to synergise the efforts of the two initiatives with the view to maximising dialogue amongst ourselves and consolidating the impact of our programmes. Today's event, therefore, signifies unity in diversity and action.
Programme Director, it is indeed also significant that this joint initiative today, finds expression in the form of this Forum, only a day after October 16, the World Food Day, as hunger and poverty are perhaps two of the upper most and greatest challenges confronting our country and the continent.
Ladies and gentlemen
The World Food Programme reports that a significant number of Southern Africans are not sure where and when the next meal will come from. The vast majority of these are women and children. It is regretfully noteworthy that although there has been significant global improvement in the living conditions of the citizens of the world, there has been regression in sub-Saharan Africa. This regression is particularly apparent when viewing the people living in extreme conditions of poverty globally, which has steadily declined from 29% in 1990 to 23% in 1999, whereas in Sub Saharan Africa, despite the increase in population in the same period, 47% of the people still live in extreme poverty. Essentially, whilst the number of people living in poverty in the world has decreased, our region has not only maintained the lion's share of these but has also increased them in number. Ladies and gentlemen, these are not mere statistics, but our very own flesh and blood.
Without being an alarmist, it is also important to note that although one of the key global goals set in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, immunisation rates have fallen below 50% of the children in sub-Saharan Africa. Global economic and trade trends, have done very little to assist the situation and, in fact, have had Africans looking for their own coping mechanisms and instruments. Unfortunately, because of a lack of resources this has meant that Africans have to give up the little they have in order to cope. Take for instance in Zambia when food prices increased at the end of last year, 78% of the households reduced the number of meals a day and 58% of them were forced to go without a meal.
According to Statistics South Africa Poverty Indicators, which classify households according to imputed average per capita monthly expenditure, there are over 2.2 million households or a total of about 14 million people who spend R500 or less per month. This number constitutes about 32% of the South African population. More significantly, this means that over 18 million South Africans live on less than $2 a day. I am certain that we all share the view that all these people face extreme conditions of poverty, hunger and starvation.
In the South African context, partly on account of apartheid spatial planning, poverty is distributed unevenly amongst the nine provinces of our country, with Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and, more recently, Free State being by far the hardest hit in terms of high poverty rates. Even within provinces themselves, poverty is highly stratified either spatially, that is specific pockets of extreme poverty or by target group with women, children, people with disabilities, elderly and other vulnerable groups being more likely to be poor. It is important to note that six out of ten children in South Africa live in poverty and that 99 000 households are headed by children aged 10 to 17 years. Of the many conditions and factors associated with poor communities, food insecurity is found to be one of the major indicators to poverty and vulnerability. "There is an existing South African anomaly of enough food production to feed the country, yet millions of our people still go hungry. This is called, living with the contradiction. This anomaly has been recently exacerbated by the food price increases, which saw the producer price inflation reaching a thirteen-year high of 15,4 % in September 2002".
For its part government has set aside resources through the Integrated Food Security & Nutrition Programme to, on the one hand provide emergency food relief to poor households over a limited period, whilst on the other hand, engage the very same households in long term sustainable food production and economic activities. In order to deal with relief measures we have since December last year provided food parcels to over 250 000 households and have are now disbursing social grants to over 6,5 million South Africans. Both these efforts would have not been near possible without the generous support of many private sector and civil society organisations. I take this opportunity to recognise the efforts of Tiger Brands, the Gift of the Givers and Johnnic Communications who have all assisted us to ensure that the Minister's objective of ensuring that every child has at least one meal a day is realised. I also take this opportunity to thank Shell International, the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, VOLSA, Soul City, Cell C, the SABC, Access and many of the religious organisations who have taken their time, energy and resources to ensure that children are indeed put first. Through their efforts, thousands of organisations and millions of volunteers we have helped us reach and even surpassed by far the 3 million target of children to be registered for social grants. On behalf of these children, we say thank you most kindly for your efforts. You have brought and continue to bring hope to the lives of many children, the very future of our country. The good job of work you have done in highly commendable. Rona re re, le ka moso, Nangamso.
Ladies and gentlemen
As much as the efforts of all these organisations have made a dent to the poverty and hunger situation confronting our communities, if we are to totally eliminate extreme hunger, poverty and vulnerability form our midst we must all act as one. If we are to ensure that every child does not go to bed without a meal, we must begin to work tirelessly and without desire for recognition or material reward. The extrication of our children from poverty is in itself enough reward for our children hold our destiny. I therefore take this opportunity to invite all of you to participate in the Integrated Food Security & Nutrition Programme and all other efforts supported or led by government designed to address the needs of the vulnerable, especially our children. I also implore you to assist us to ensure that every child is registered at birth and that every South African is in possession of an identity document, for without these documents access to any of the services and benefits that government has put at their disposal will be limited or, worse still elusive.
Three Hundred and Seventy Two days ago, the Minister, Mr. Cyril Ramaphosa and Mr Raymond Ackerman called all of us including some of you gathered here today, to a venue a stone's throw away from here. They provided for us a single brief, "ensure that we all act separately but our efforts are felt as one". On that occasion of our meeting, Mr. Ramaphosa implored us to "emerge with practical and workable partnerships which will be SMART". In his view this would require that we collectively assume responsibility to contribute to social development and meet community demands whilst utilising business's capacity, skills, expertise, and management systems so as to make a meaningful impact in impoverished communities.
Ladies and gentlemen
I am pleased to announce that much progress has been made in this regard, we now have set for ourselves Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time bound (SMART) targets for our partnerships. We agreed that as priority we would address the issues of food security, rural development, HIV/AIDS, children and financing for development together in these two years. Although we have not as yet made extraordinary gains in these areas, I am delighted to say that we have begun to approach the issues in unison. At any rate, we are only halfway in the implementation period, and there is a lot of promise that a great deal will still be achieved. We have, together, implemented projects such as the Unite Against Hunger Campaign, the take the girl child to work campaign, the plough back campaign and several other initiatives.
I must, however, express concern at the pace and slow mode of implementing the partnership, particularly where the Greenfield Projects are concerned. I say this because of the forty projects; only six have received direct or meaningful support since last year. One of the limiting factors with these projects has been the infrastructure and information to manage these projects. In this regard we are in the process of finalising the information and management system and framework that is updated and made accessible to all our partners so that they may further consider the extent to which they can individually and collectively take up the projects.
I would therefore like to take this opportunity to further appeal that you consider the Greenfield projects presented to you by the Minister last year. We should deliberate and consider what we can collectively contribute to these projects. Already during the Summit report launch in June this year R3 000 was collected from the attendees of the launch towards supporting the projects. Given the size of these projects and the magnitude of challenges they face, this is drop in the ocean.
It also important to note that these challenges are not isolated only to these forty projects, but to the vast majority of our communities. In this regard I would like to recognise the continued collective effort taken by the private sector to address these conditions that confront our communities. I would however like to reiterate what the Minister said last year when he implored all of us to ensure that all we do does make an impact on our people. We must therefore ensure that every effort is directed at putting children first. This will require that we strengthen families and communities as it takes an entire village to raise a child. In this regard we will, next year, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the international year of the family, be accelerating our efforts of strengthen the family through consolidated policies and programmes. I take this opportunity to invite you to these celebrations and hope that all your efforts will target and reach families, particularly those that face conditions of extreme poverty and vulnerability.
Ladies and gentlemen
The children of South Africa and Africa as a whole sit pitched glaring at the horizon and awaiting once again the outcomes of your deliberations. They hang on to every word we utter and every commitment we put forward. Accordingly, if these are not followed by action, we would have squandered the only opportunity we may have had to rescue the future from the grim often predicted by research institutions. We dare not fail the daughters and sons of Africa. Afrika Ke Nako, it is time to act as the time for dialogue has seen its sunset. The time to act is now.
I thank you
For more information contact: Mbulelo Musi, 082 904 3395
Issued by: Department of Social Development
17 October 2003
Source: Department of Social Development
Title: Madonsela: Social investment summit
OPENING ADDRESS BY MR VUSI MADONSELA, DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, ON OCCASION OF THE BUSINESS SUMMIT/CSI FORUM 2003: THE INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR ERADICATION OF POVERTY, Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, 17 October 2003
Salutations
Programme Director
Distinguished guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
On this historic occasion of the Business Summit/Corporate Social Investment Forum, I bring you warm and hearty greetings from the Minister for Social Development, Dr Zola Skweyiya, Members of the Executive Council for Social Development in the provinces, the Heads of Social Development, Senior Managers and the entire staff of Social Development, in their various formations, branches Chief Directorates and programmes, wherever they are to be found, across the length and breadth of our country, starting from the Beit Bridge in Limpopo in the North, down to Cape Point in the South.
As for myself, I wish to, as I now do, convey my profound thanks and heartfelt gratitude to the organising team of this function for inviting me to participate in these proceedings today. I must, at once, confess myself most sincerely flattered and, indeed, singularly privileged, to have been asked to deliver an opening address at this function, to an audience as illustrious as yourselves.
The fact that this Business Summit/Corporate Social Investment Forum 2003, under theme "Poverty eradication and social development effective public private partnerships" takes place on 17 October is a matter of historical significance. It is so because October 17 has been determined by the United Nations to be the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. 17 October 2003, therefore, presents us with a watershed opportunity launch a formidable spring offensive against unemployment, social exclusion and poverty. This Business Summit/Corporate Social Investment Forum 2003, today, therefore, marks an important epochal change in the country's fight against poverty in that it unites two previously separate initiatives, on the one hand, the Corporate Social Investment Forum initiative which was established three years ago and, on the other, the Business Summit initiative launched by Minister Skweyiya two years ago, under the distinguished patronage of Messrs Cyril Ramaphosa and Raymond Ackerman. The organisers of function deemed it necessary and fitting to synergise the efforts of the two initiatives with the view to maximising dialogue amongst ourselves and consolidating the impact of our programmes. Today's event, therefore, signifies unity in diversity and action.
Programme Director, it is indeed also significant that this joint initiative today, finds expression in the form of this Forum, only a day after October 16, the World Food Day, as hunger and poverty are perhaps two of the upper most and greatest challenges confronting our country and the continent.
Ladies and gentlemen
The World Food Programme reports that a significant number of Southern Africans are not sure where and when the next meal will come from. The vast majority of these are women and children. It is regretfully noteworthy that although there has been significant global improvement in the living conditions of the citizens of the world, there has been regression in sub-Saharan Africa. This regression is particularly apparent when viewing the people living in extreme conditions of poverty globally, which has steadily declined from 29% in 1990 to 23% in 1999, whereas in Sub Saharan Africa, despite the increase in population in the same period, 47% of the people still live in extreme poverty. Essentially, whilst the number of people living in poverty in the world has decreased, our region has not only maintained the lion's share of these but has also increased them in number. Ladies and gentlemen, these are not mere statistics, but our very own flesh and blood.
Without being an alarmist, it is also important to note that although one of the key global goals set in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, immunisation rates have fallen below 50% of the children in sub-Saharan Africa. Global economic and trade trends, have done very little to assist the situation and, in fact, have had Africans looking for their own coping mechanisms and instruments. Unfortunately, because of a lack of resources this has meant that Africans have to give up the little they have in order to cope. Take for instance in Zambia when food prices increased at the end of last year, 78% of the households reduced the number of meals a day and 58% of them were forced to go without a meal.
According to Statistics South Africa Poverty Indicators, which classify households according to imputed average per capita monthly expenditure, there are over 2.2 million households or a total of about 14 million people who spend R500 or less per month. This number constitutes about 32% of the South African population. More significantly, this means that over 18 million South Africans live on less than $2 a day. I am certain that we all share the view that all these people face extreme conditions of poverty, hunger and starvation.
In the South African context, partly on account of apartheid spatial planning, poverty is distributed unevenly amongst the nine provinces of our country, with Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and, more recently, Free State being by far the hardest hit in terms of high poverty rates. Even within provinces themselves, poverty is highly stratified either spatially, that is specific pockets of extreme poverty or by target group with women, children, people with disabilities, elderly and other vulnerable groups being more likely to be poor. It is important to note that six out of ten children in South Africa live in poverty and that 99 000 households are headed by children aged 10 to 17 years. Of the many conditions and factors associated with poor communities, food insecurity is found to be one of the major indicators to poverty and vulnerability. "There is an existing South African anomaly of enough food production to feed the country, yet millions of our people still go hungry. This is called, living with the contradiction. This anomaly has been recently exacerbated by the food price increases, which saw the producer price inflation reaching a thirteen-year high of 15,4 % in September 2002".
For its part government has set aside resources through the Integrated Food Security & Nutrition Programme to, on the one hand provide emergency food relief to poor households over a limited period, whilst on the other hand, engage the very same households in long term sustainable food production and economic activities. In order to deal with relief measures we have since December last year provided food parcels to over 250 000 households and have are now disbursing social grants to over 6,5 million South Africans. Both these efforts would have not been near possible without the generous support of many private sector and civil society organisations. I take this opportunity to recognise the efforts of Tiger Brands, the Gift of the Givers and Johnnic Communications who have all assisted us to ensure that the Minister's objective of ensuring that every child has at least one meal a day is realised. I also take this opportunity to thank Shell International, the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, VOLSA, Soul City, Cell C, the SABC, Access and many of the religious organisations who have taken their time, energy and resources to ensure that children are indeed put first. Through their efforts, thousands of organisations and millions of volunteers we have helped us reach and even surpassed by far the 3 million target of children to be registered for social grants. On behalf of these children, we say thank you most kindly for your efforts. You have brought and continue to bring hope to the lives of many children, the very future of our country. The good job of work you have done in highly commendable. Rona re re, le ka moso, Nangamso.
Ladies and gentlemen
As much as the efforts of all these organisations have made a dent to the poverty and hunger situation confronting our communities, if we are to totally eliminate extreme hunger, poverty and vulnerability form our midst we must all act as one. If we are to ensure that every child does not go to bed without a meal, we must begin to work tirelessly and without desire for recognition or material reward. The extrication of our children from poverty is in itself enough reward for our children hold our destiny. I therefore take this opportunity to invite all of you to participate in the Integrated Food Security & Nutrition Programme and all other efforts supported or led by government designed to address the needs of the vulnerable, especially our children. I also implore you to assist us to ensure that every child is registered at birth and that every South African is in possession of an identity document, for without these documents access to any of the services and benefits that government has put at their disposal will be limited or, worse still elusive.
Three Hundred and Seventy Two days ago, the Minister, Mr. Cyril Ramaphosa and Mr Raymond Ackerman called all of us including some of you gathered here today, to a venue a stone's throw away from here. They provided for us a single brief, "ensure that we all act separately but our efforts are felt as one". On that occasion of our meeting, Mr. Ramaphosa implored us to "emerge with practical and workable partnerships which will be SMART". In his view this would require that we collectively assume responsibility to contribute to social development and meet community demands whilst utilising business's capacity, skills, expertise, and management systems so as to make a meaningful impact in impoverished communities.
Ladies and gentlemen
I am pleased to announce that much progress has been made in this regard, we now have set for ourselves Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time bound (SMART) targets for our partnerships. We agreed that as priority we would address the issues of food security, rural development, HIV/AIDS, children and financing for development together in these two years. Although we have not as yet made extraordinary gains in these areas, I am delighted to say that we have begun to approach the issues in unison. At any rate, we are only halfway in the implementation period, and there is a lot of promise that a great deal will still be achieved. We have, together, implemented projects such as the Unite Against Hunger Campaign, the take the girl child to work campaign, the plough back campaign and several other initiatives.
I must, however, express concern at the pace and slow mode of implementing the partnership, particularly where the Greenfield Projects are concerned. I say this because of the forty projects; only six have received direct or meaningful support since last year. One of the limiting factors with these projects has been the infrastructure and information to manage these projects. In this regard we are in the process of finalising the information and management system and framework that is updated and made accessible to all our partners so that they may further consider the extent to which they can individually and collectively take up the projects.
I would therefore like to take this opportunity to further appeal that you consider the Greenfield projects presented to you by the Minister last year. We should deliberate and consider what we can collectively contribute to these projects. Already during the Summit report launch in June this year R3 000 was collected from the attendees of the launch towards supporting the projects. Given the size of these projects and the magnitude of challenges they face, this is drop in the ocean.
It also important to note that these challenges are not isolated only to these forty projects, but to the vast majority of our communities. In this regard I would like to recognise the continued collective effort taken by the private sector to address these conditions that confront our communities. I would however like to reiterate what the Minister said last year when he implored all of us to ensure that all we do does make an impact on our people. We must therefore ensure that every effort is directed at putting children first. This will require that we strengthen families and communities as it takes an entire village to raise a child. In this regard we will, next year, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the international year of the family, be accelerating our efforts of strengthen the family through consolidated policies and programmes. I take this opportunity to invite you to these celebrations and hope that all your efforts will target and reach families, particularly those that face conditions of extreme poverty and vulnerability.
Ladies and gentlemen
The children of South Africa and Africa as a whole sit pitched glaring at the horizon and awaiting once again the outcomes of your deliberations. They hang on to every word we utter and every commitment we put forward. Accordingly, if these are not followed by action, we would have squandered the only opportunity we may have had to rescue the future from the grim often predicted by research institutions. We dare not fail the daughters and sons of Africa. Afrika Ke Nako, it is time to act as the time for dialogue has seen its sunset. The time to act is now.
I thank you
For more information contact: Mbulelo Musi, 082 904 3395
Issued by: Department of Social Development
17 October 2003
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