Source: Adelzadeh et al 1998
"South Africa faces an enormous task in building a caring society. It is a national task that calls for the mobilisation of the whole nation into a united people's action, into a partnership with Government for progressive change and a better life for all, for a common effort to build a winning nation"
TM MBEKI
President, Republic of South Africa
| Prof V Taylor | Department of Welfare |
| Dr T Masilela | Department of Welfare |
| Ms CA DuToit | Department of Foreign Affairs |
| Ms L Viljoen | Department of Welfare |
| Ms A Bester | Department of Welfare |
| Dr AM Du Toit | Department of Welfare |
| Mr. M Baloyi | Department of Trade and Industry |
| Ms C Alvillar | Department of Labour |
| Dr F Maforah | Department of Welfare |
| Mr T Holele | Department of Welfare |
| Mr J Van Zuydam | Department of Welfare |
| Ms CA Du Toit | Department of Foreign Affairs |
| Ms L Koyana | Department of Education |
| Mr Z Thomas | Department of Justice |
| Ms N Langa | Department of Welfare |
| Ms Montsisi | Department of Health |
| Mr S Maloji | Department of Agriculture |
| Mr A Ditlake | SANGOCO |
| Ms A Rambogin | Ntsika Trust |
| Mr N Ramklas | National Welfare and Social Service and Development Forum |
The preparation of this Report would not have been possible without the support and valuable contributions of a large number of individuals and organizations. We acknowledge with grateful appreciation, the advice and guidance provided by the following departments: Health, Education, Trade and Industry, Justice, Agriculture, Labour, CIU in the President's Office. The Report also benefited greatly from advice and suggestions provided by the South African Committee for Social Development and the National Welfare Social Services and Development Forum.
In response to the social development situation in South Africa, the Government reaffirmed its Copenhagen commitments at a National Conference on the World Summit for Social Development. Follow-up, was held from 18 to 19 May 1998 at the Eskom Conference Center, Midrand, .Johannesburg, South Africa. During the 2nd National Conference on the Follow-up to the World Summit, held in Midrand from 3 to 4 November 1999, contributions to the National Report on Social Development were invited. The following persons presented speeches and consultation documents at these workshops:
Dr ZST Skweyiya Minister for Welfare, Population and Development,
Ms G Fraser-Moleketi, former Minister for Welfare, Population and Development,
Bishop-Elect Dr JT Seoka,
Mr Julian Disney,
Mr J David Whaley,
Dr NE Chinkanda,
Dr W Roland,
Dr P Pillay,
Mr H Ratshefola,
Ms S Mkhabela,
Mr Niresh Ramklas and
Prof B McKendrick.
The twentieth century ended with calls from world leaders and development agencies for urgent steps to be taken to address the issue of poverty in many of the developing countries and particularly on the African continent.
The South African Government has been part of a process to create global awareness of poverty. Immediately after the first democratic elections of 1994, the new Government moved swiftly to address poverty in South Africa by protecting the poorest sectors of our society, in particular women, children, disabled persons and the elderly.
This commitment to eradicate poverty has not wavered since the first term of office of the democratic Government. Different Government departments have made a concerted effort to transform the lives of millions of South Africans, particularly those in the rural areas who have been poor and marginalised for decades.
In his state of the nation address at the opening of the second democratically elected Parliament, President Thabo Mbeki called for a national effort in building a caring society. The President stated that this is a national task that calls for the
"…mobilization of the whole nation in a united people's action, into a partnership with Government for progressive change and a better life for all, for a common effort to build a winning nation".
While the Government has made tremendous strides towards the upliftment of the poor, marginalised and vulnerable in South Africa, it has inherited a society afflicted with almost the greatest levels of inequality in the world, together with wide spread poverty and underdevelopment. In its second term, the South African Government has committed itself to speeding up the pace of delivery and making a meaningful impact in the lives of the poor in South Africa.
South Africa reaffirms its commitment to the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and the Program of Action. To this end, based on the full participation by all aspects of civil society, South Africa has pledged to give the highest priority to policies and actions to promote social progress, social justice, the improvement of the human condition and social integration.
On behalf of my Government, I would like to thank the large number of individuals and broader civil society structures who made a valuable contribution to eradicate poverty and to improve the lives of the majority of South Africans who still live in abject poverty.
Chapter 1: Introduction Structure Of The Report
Chapter 2: The Eradication Of Poverty
Chapter 3: Full Employment
Chapter 4: Social Integration
Chapter 5: International And Regional Interventions
Chapter 6: Mobilisation Of Resources, Main Constraints And Prospects
Chapter 6: Further Initiatives
Chapter 7: Conclusion
Annexure 1: SADC Position On Social Development
The World Summit on Social Development held in Copenhagen, Denmark in March 1995 was part of a series of very significant UN Conferences of the last decade. These conferences looked at critical issues of the environment; population, the position of women and the habitat people live in. The conferences took place at an opportune time for South Africa, that is, just at the time when the new Government was seriously devising development policies to implement the Reconstruction and Development Program.
The Constitution of South Africa, as adopted on 8 May 1996, is lauded as being among the finest in the world. Chapter 2 of the Constitution is the Bill of Rights, which is regarded as the "cornerstone of democracy" in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all the people of our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom.
The Constitution guarantees the attainment of equality and outlaws any form of discrimination. Besides embracing classical rights and freedoms such as freedom of movement and association, it also enshrines the attainment of socio-economic rights. At the time of drafting the Constitution, the ANC argued," What do those classical rights mean if the majority remain landless, are poor, hungry and jobless?" This argument formed an important guiding principle in the conceptualisation of the Constitution. Indeed, the greatest commitment a country can make to the commitments of the World Summit for Social Development is contained in South Africa's Constitution. Social development is imperative so that all men and women, especially those living in poverty, may lead gratifying lives and contribute to the well being of their families, communities and humankind. South Africa's democracy is supported by a solid Constitution, which entrenches democracy, eliminates all forms of apartheid, promotes and protects human rights and strives for the attainment of a culture of socio-economic rights.
The Copenhagen commitments are of special importance to South Africa because many of the problems are especially severe in Africa. The region is especially vulnerable to weaknesses in the international environment, which are identified in the following agreements:
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The ANC's election to Government marked the end of the apartheid era, which was characterized by institutionalized discrimination based on colour and race. The policies of apartheid South Africa led to a shameful legacy of human underdevelopment, which will remain etched in the collective consciousness of the world for a long time.
The level of poverty and inequality in South Africa is one dimension of that legacy. For decades South Africa has had one of the greatest income differentials in the world with a Gini co-efficient of 0.58, the poorest 40% of households received only I % of the total income, while the richest 10 % of households received over 40% of the total income. While South Africa was rated an upper-middle-income country, the people live in abject poverty.
Overcoming the consequences of apartheid will be a complex and daunting task
A minority enjoyed opulence and wealth equal to that of any developed country, while a significant percentage of households had no access to clean water, electricity, health-care and education. These inequalities led to the two-nation theory: one rich, one poor, one black, one white.
The World Summit for Social Development was held ten months after South Africa's first democratically elected Government took office. The Summit's pledge to eradicate poverty, achieve full employment and foster a stable, safe and just society resonated with the ideals and strategies of the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP), a national policy framework, which would irreversibly transform the country. This policy framework was jointly developed by the ANC, its alliance partners, broad civil society, NGOs and researchers.
The major challenge to the newly elected ANC-led Government of National Unity was to redress the past whilst ensuring that South Africa continues to develop in a global context. The Government of National Unity had to put development policies in place and pass legislation, which would irreversibly transform the country. The RDP is an integrated, coherent socio-economic policy framework, which seek to mobilise the people of South Africa and the country's resources to eradicating all apartheid structures and to build a democratic, non-racial and non-sexist society. The RDP captured the hopes and ideals of the country's poor and oppressed. This policy framework has moral authority and was sufficiently persuasive for the Government of National Unity, which included opposition parties, to accept it as the national policy for reconstruction and development. The social development situation in South Africa 1995 could be summarized as follows:
"Human development is the end; economic growth a means. The purpose of wealth should be to enrich people’s lives, to broaden people’s choices and to enable every citizen, every child, every woman and every man to reach her or his full potential. Yet as the experience in many countries has shown, economic growth does not automatically translate into human development." HIV and Human Development Report(1998)
According to the NIEP Report (Adelzadeh et al 1998), prior to the early 1990s most large and small scale surveys of poverty were of ‘unknown representativeness’ (Lipton and Lipton (1993) in Adelzadeh et al 1998) and it was thus difficult to draw broader conclusions from the results of various studies focusing on poverty and livelihoods. Since then, there have been several large scale, representative surveys of poverty and livelihoods in South Africa. In 1993 the Project for Statistics on Living Standards and Development (PSLSD) surveyed 9,000 households and the results have provided policy makers with an invaluable resource in identifying the vulnerable as well as the obstacles poor people face in constructing sustainable livelihoods. In the same year, the Central Statistical Service (CSS) initiated its annual October Household Survey (OHS). For each year since 1993, the CSS has undertaken a large-scale survey in October, on housing, employment, services, health and infrastructure. Significantly, in 1995 an Income and Expenditure Survey was run concurrently with the October survey of 30,000 households. With the release of the 1995 OHS, researchers were in a position to assess poverty in South Africa through both large-scale empirical surveys and smaller, more intensive, micro studies.
In 1994, the PSLSD and OHS surveys confirmed what policy makers and development experts expected: that South Africa was amongst the most unequal societies in the world, that there was a strong race dimension to poverty; that there were more poor people in rural areas; and that women and children were affected more seriously by malnutrition, destitution and poverty. Thus, despite economic and political changes and the "...commonly held view that income distribution in South Africa has improved" (McGrath, 1994, 49 in Adelzadeh et al 1998), the distribution of wealth between rich and poor remained extremely uneven. The Gini co-efficient of 0.65, measured in 1993 for the total population, is second only to Brazil, which is the world’s most unequal society. It is alarming that the gap between rich and poor was that it has remained relatively constant over the last three decades despite significant increases in wealth for a small but prominent number of Africans, Coloureds and Indians. The conclusion that is that while the economic position of some people from previously disadvantaged groups had improved, the majority of the population was deeper in poverty than before (Table 1).
Table 1: Income Shares of Households
| Year | Poorest 40% | Next 40% | Next 10% | Next 10% |
| 1975 | 5.2% | 23.9% | 21.7% | 49.2% |
| 1991 | 3.9% | 25.6% | 19.3% | 51.2% |
| Change | -25.0% | 7.1% | -11.1% | 4.1% |
Source: McGrath, 1994 in NIEP (1998)
The Income and Expenditure Survey of 1995 showed that the gap between rich and poor was much higher than the gap between blacks and whites in terms of shares of total expenditure. The shares of the bottom 40% and the top 20% of the population in total expenditure are 6% and 69%, respectively. On the other hand, the shares of the black and white populations in total expenditure were 43% and 46%, respectively. Despite the apparent shift from race to class inequality, the legacy of apartheid continues to have a long-term impact on those affected by poverty.
The adult literacy rate in South Africa is largely influenced by race, with whites nearly always being literate and blacks being the most disadvantaged by the apartheid education system. According to the SA Country Report : African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, the figures for 1991 were:
Table 2: Literacy rate per population group
| RACIAL DESCRIPTION | PERCENTAGE LITERATE |
| Africans/Blacks | 76.64% |
| Coloureds | 91,06% |
| Indian/Asians | 95,48% |
| Whites | 99,52% |
| Average | 82,15% |
Source: SA Country Report: African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (1998)
South Africa’s capacity to implement social policies and programs is influenced to a large extent by the legacies of the apartheid regime. As noted earlier, whilst plans are put in place to develop the country, resources be directed towards redressing past violations. One important area in which this is immediately apparent is education. Prior to 1994, the education system in South Africa was divided along racial lines. The damage caused is illustrated in the figures from CCS census 1996 shown below and women are hardest hit:
South Africa had to face the challenge of addressing the education deficiencies of the past and providing opportunities for the country's many young people. Hence, the White Paper on Education and Training (1995) clearly states the democratic Government's commitment to providing lifelong education and training for all South Africans.
The processes of economic exploitation and political oppression of black men and women met with various forms of organised resistance. South African women have been central to these struggles for decades. The central role played by women as producers in pre-colonial agricultural society accorded them status as well as a limited degree of authority. However, with colonial state interventions to restructure the homestead economy to serve the migrant labour system, women lost much of both their economic centrality and their social status (Guy in Baden et al (1997)). Before 1994, the ANC’s legal experts, as well as academic lawyers, had begun to address the question of legislative reform to end the subordinate position of women under the diverse legal regimes existing under apartheid. Of particular concern were laws relating to the family, including marriage and divorce and regulations pertaining to maintenance. The issue of rape in marriage and broader violence against women were also highlighted in discussions of what needed to be changed.
Lastly, land ownership and land development patterns in South Africa strongly reflect the political and economic conditions of the apartheid era. Racially based land policies were a cause of insecurity, landlessness and poverty amongst black people, and a cause of inefficient land administration and land use.
Although the problem of unemployment in South Africa has a marked geographical component, it is nevertheless high all over the country and reflects an economy where job growth had been declining rapidly. In the 1960s, 30% of the population failed to secure a formal sector job; by the 1990s, this figure had risen to over 50% of the potential labour force. The sectors most affected were mining and agriculture where job losses have been significant while the number of jobs in manufacturing has stagnated.
Studies of employment growth in South Africa as well as more detailed regional analyses have shown that the number of new entrants to the job market is outstripping formal sector job creation by an increasingly wide margin (Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), 1993a; Ligthelm, 1993; le Roux et al, 1994 as referred to in the NIEP Report). Semi-skilled and unskilled workers have been hardest hit as the number of jobs in these categories has fallen faster than in other employment categories (Cawker and Whiteford, 1993 in the NIEP report). The impact of a low absorption capacity of the formal economy has also been particularly hard on Africans, women and the youth (Rogerson, 1995 in the NIEP (1998) report). The Development Bank of Southern Africa found that the unemployment rate for women and younger people was twice as high as it is for men and older people (DBSA, 1993a). Unemployment rates were also much higher for the poor and the ultra-poor: only 23% of the poorest 20% of the population are employed (RDP, 1995).
The rate of formal employment creation had weakened furthest in the provinces where poverty levels are highest: in KwaZulu-Natal the absorption rate was 35.2%, in the Eastern Cape 33.7% and the Northern Province 22.4%. In contrast, the absorption rate in the Western Cape and the Gauteng was much higher at 57% and 58% respectively (Rogerson, 1995). The declining number of formal sector jobs countrywide has undoubtedly had a direct impact on poverty levels and the vulnerability of poor households.
Table 3: Income category by province
Source: Adelzadeh et al 1998
The vulnerable position of rural households also points to the dynamic inter-relationship between rural and urban areas in South Africa.
The burden of not having access to these amenities and having to collect wood and water on a daily basis did not, however, fall equally on all members of the household. May et al’s (1995) analysis was of the PSLSD data shows that the arduous tasks of collecting water and fuel were overwhelmingly carried out by women (Table 4).
Table 4: Access to Basic Services in South Africa
| Service | Metro | Urban | Rural | Rural African |
| Flush Toilet | 92.1 | 72.1 | 16.4 | 13.1 |
| Water: piped internal | 72.2 | 53.3 | 11.3 | 7.7 |
| Water: piped yard | 22.6 | 29.0 | 13.4 | 13.9 |
| Energy: traditional only | 0.2 | 0.4 | 9.1 | 9.3 |
| Energy: traditional and transitional | 10.2 | 31.2 | 61.1 | 63.7 |
| Energy: modern only | 63.9 | 35.9 | 12.1 | 9.7 |
Source: May et al, 1995 in the NIEP (1998) report
The arduousness of the tasks is matched by the amount of time it takes women to collect wood and water: on average women spend up to four hours a day ensuring that the household has water and wood. The time that women spend collecting wood and water is a serious obstacle to a household’s ability to escape poverty: the women who undertake these tasks are between 32 and 55 years old, arguably at an age when their productivity in other areas would be very high. The ‘time poverty’ of women in poor households is clearly a pressing issue and should be high on the agenda of policymakers.
Table 5: Collection of Water and Wood
| - | Percent of people collecting water | Percent of people collecting wood |
| All Households Female |
84.3 |
86.8 |
| Poor Households Female |
88.0 |
89.1 |
| Poor Rural Households Female |
89.3 |
90.4 |
Source: May et al, 1995 in the NIEP (1998) report
This brief overview of poverty, based on the PSLSD survey results and the 1995 OHS, had established that income inequality in South Africa had not improved, although its specific character might have changed. It has also revealed that poverty had a racial, gender and spatial dynamic: there were more Africans who are poor and they were over-represented amongst the poor; there were more women who are poor and unemployed; female headed households are generally poorer; children particularly are a vulnerable group and over 45% of the poor were children under 16 years old; and finally, poverty was more serious in the country’s rural areas. This snapshot view of poverty, while extremely important, nevertheless fails to explore how poverty was reproduced and how those households which were vulnerable, fall into poverty. In addition, while it did tell us something of the varied income sources of the poor, it did not reveal how individuals and households construct and reconstruct livelihoods in the face of social and economic crisis.
Before the first democratic election in 1994, South Africa was a highly divided society. A human rights culture did not exist, as social justice was incompatible with apartheid. Up to the democratic dispensation, South Africa was required to forge social integration, break down the barriers among its diverse peoples, and transform the social structures created by apartheid. Initial attempts to develop a comprehensive policy plan to meet the development needs of country were undertaken by the democratic alliance before 1994. The Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) represented the development priorities set by the progressive alliance to meet the basic needs of the vast majority who were socially, economically and politically excluded as a result of apartheid. For South Africa, the RDP is a national policy framework, which gives expression and content to the goals of the Social Summit. Political liberation from a repressive, apartheid regime was a central objective of the struggle for liberation in South Africa.
Moreover, the political and social struggle was based on the principle that democratic change would lead to an improvement in the overall quality of life of the poorest people (HIV/AIDS & Human Development Report (1998).
The preparation of this report has been based on extensive multi-sectoral discussions in two working conferences as previously mentioned. An Interdepartmental Committee on Social Development and the South African Committee for Social Development compiled the information in such a way that it reflects the recommendations contained in the United Nations guide for the preparation of the UN Special Session to beheld in Geneva from 26 to 30 June 2000. In addition to multi-sectoral reports on various sectors such as health, education, the Government's GEAR Policy, White Papers, and annual reports from the different departments were used as important reference sources.
Chapter 1 recalls the country's economic and social development conditions before 1994, on the eve of the Copenhagen commitments, when it was engaged in the reconstruction and transformation of the country.
Chapter 2 attempts to describe the South Africa's poverty reduction efforts since the signing of the Copenhagen Declaration. It presents the progress achieved in various sectors as direct contributors to reducing the country's poverty indices.
Chapter 3 analyses the employment situation and seeks to show progress under the Government strategies relating to the legal, economic and institutional frameworks as determining factors in improving, promoting and maintaining employment in South Africa.
Chapter 4 deals with Government activities for social integration. It focuses on the strategies adopted to reduce socio-economic disparities.
Chapter 5 emphasizes the importance of regional and international co-operation in the development of poverty reduction programs as highlighted with specific reference to the SADC statement on social development.
Chapter 6 presents the mobilisation of resources and the main constraints and prospects about the country's capacity to satisfy all the urgent requirements of its socio-economic development.
Chapter 7 reaffirms the country's commitment to social development and reiterates its appeal for national, regional and international partnership and solidarity to build a more just and socially equitable world.
Contents | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Appendix