Under a GOOD Party government, a basic income grant (BIG) would be affordable and implemented through allocative efficiency, restructuring government, professionalising the public service, cutting out corruption and some tax reforms.

This is the plan for the party, if the GOOD Party led by Patricia de Lille comes out top in the 2024 national elections.

Speaking exclusively to Polity, De Lille said more must be done to root out corruption in government, which she said stole directly from poor people and claimed that about R500-billion was stolen over a period of two to three years.

De Lille noted that the country’s fiscus was in a bad space and that South Africa had a massive debt owing to years of mismanagement and bailing out of State-owned enterprises.

De Lille said after looking at the country’s poverty data line, her party engaged the services of economists and finance experts to look at the affordability of a BIG.

The party also looked at other countries that have implemented the universal BIG and that have seen a reduction in poverty as a result.

She believes the BIG can be affordable, explaining that government can take a percentage from the millions of rands of royalties from all of the country’s gold mines and mineral resources and move it towards a BIG.

She said government could also take monies recovered by the State, the Special Investigating Unit, the Asset Forfeiture Unit and proceeds from criminals to enable the grant. 

Meanwhile, De Lille said her party was calling for the structure of government to be reviewed and be transformed.

She highlighted that more than four years ago former Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said that all government departments and all three spheres of government must go back to a zero-based budget.

The GOOD Party said if South Africa was able to implement zero-based budgeting then government could free up resources. The party is proposing, as a solution to existing poverty and to support the millions of unemployed people, a BIG of R999 a month.

De Lille explained that the GOOD Party took R50 000 from its own funding, in a pilot study, giving residents in Gauteng, Eastern Cape and Western Cape a R1 000 per person, to look at the effects of that sum of money.

“We think that if government can upscale that, you can see a lot of micro entrepreneurs that can make a living for themselves, so that is why we feel very strongly that one thing we can do is that. We cannot afford not to look after the majority of people that are suffering in our country at the moment,” she said.

She pointed out that the majority of jobless South Africans were suffering, and struggling to put food on the table.

The GOOD Party started a campaign two years ago to advocate for an increase in the R350 Social Relief of Distress Grant, which it believes is half of what families need to survive on a daily basis.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, government introduced the R350 Social Relief of Distress grant to help citizens.

The grant currently reaches about 9-million unemployed people every month.

Earlier this month, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced that the R350 grant was expected to be raised to R370 from April this year.