K Lekgoro: Gauteng Social Development Prov Budget Vote 2006/07

20 June 2006

Mr Speaker of the House,
Honourable Premier,
Honourable members,
Honourable members of the Mayoral Committee,
Members of government departments,
Distinguished guests,

Social development is but an approach that is used by governments to respond
mostly to the consequences of poverty. Mr Speaker, poverty has been so
pervasive through the history of mankind to a point where people have come to
think that it is the call of nature and that is how it ought to be.

A fact of history is that poverty is a creation of people, traceable how it
begun and spread as societies developed and its root being the desire to
accumulate even at the expense of fellow human beings. When society moved
through the late stages of primitive society to feudalism and into capitalism
this form of accumulation became a dominant feature of those societies, which
was then rooted in the political systems of the countries of the world.

We inherited from one such political system. A political system that created
conditions of poverty for the many so that a few could accumulate. A political
system that created conditions of poverty for black people in order for white
people to accumulate.

I believe, Mr Speaker, that as we deal with the present we must do so with a
clear recollection where we come from as part of the universe and as a country.
With that we will have a better grasp of what we want to do for the future.

One of the powerful weapons of a people struggling against any form of
social ill is not to despair. When what you are struggling for is for the good
of humanity, you certainly have a base for hope because you know that good will
triumph against evil.

As we confront the social ill in the province that arise out of the poverty
that our people find themselves in we need to premise our frame of mind on the
hope that for the good of our people we will finally triumph.

Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu enjoins us with such spirit of hope when at the
face of the hang man’s noose he defiantly declares to his weeping mother, “tell
my people that I love them and that my blood will nourish the tree of liberty.”
Many years after that dreadful morning the advent of democracy dawned and an
era of hope began.

Our President Thabo Mbeki premises his message of the ‘age of hope’ on the
strides we have made as government and as a people in bettering the lives of
people. He premises that message on the resilience and goodwill that our people
continue to demonstrate in working together with our government in improving
their lives for the better.

Our Premier in his State of the Province address further expressed our
achievements, the challenges that lie ahead and what departments will be seized
with in the current financial year.

Mr Speaker, I think it is in order to briefly report to the house areas of
our work how we fared in the last financial year and how we hope to navigate
the rest of the financial year.

We conduct our work alive to the principal point that the only direct way
out of poverty is through economic growth and development. We are also
conscious that as we work towards that aspired achievement we have to deal with
the reality of present conditions, we have to bring relieve where it is
required and where possible take the citizens to levels that they can fend for
themselves.

Developmental paradigm

The migration of social security to South African Social Security Agency
(SASSA) has enabled the Department to focus on developmental social services.
This affords the Department the opportunity to dedicate its resources and time
to address the issues of the aged, the orphaned, young people in conflict with
the law, youth and children living and working the streets, children heading
house holds abused children, women and the aged, those affected and living with
HIV and AIDS, those who live below the poverty line, development of children
from birth to six years. Honourable members, as you know the list in this
category of people in our province is very long and the resources limited.

Let me take the older person to demonstrate my point. There are just over
half a million older persons in our province, a large number of whom will need
their plight attended to by society. Through our present programmes including
organs of civil society we are only able to attend to about 27 000. This is a
discrepancy government must overcome.

Let me make another example on the Early Childhood Development (ECD)
initiative in our province. The province has 725 791 children between the ages
of zero and four. Government programmes in this regard only involve 20 000
children.

The need is vast. If we are agreed that a progressive social development
approach is measured by the universal inclusion of its clientele, then the
question that confronts us is how and with what resources we are going to close
this gap.

Our programmes in these categories of people are dominated by what I call
institutional models. That is an infrastructure in the form of building, the
practitioners and the clients who afford to pay for that service e.g. your
typical old age home or an ECD facility.

While the importance of these institutions cannot be overemphasised, the
question we have to answer is will we ever master the resources to put up these
institutions in order to reach out to the balance of the need that I referred
to above.

My call to practitioners in our sector is that let us explore if Home Based
Care (HBC) as a model cannot be exploited at lesser costs, to reach out to the
vast numbers that are outside our care. After all it is a mechanism that is now
given legal effect in the Older Person’s Bill and Children’s Bill.

In making this call, there is no intention at all to put HBC programmes
against institutions. In fact I see the institutions and its practitioners as a
resource that we should use to realise those home based care programmes.

To this end I have reached an agreement with senior management in our
Department that we should initiate and lead this discussion in the province.
[NB: the Older Persons and Early Childhood Development are used as example.
This may apply to other programmes].

Computerising our systems

The absence of a computerised system in our Department up to our local
office, where strategic professionals such as social workers are employed is a
negative in our operations. As a result we have tasked a team to put together a
system that will bring us up to computer age.

The team has reported and we are in the process of procuring the relevant
equipment and training of the relevant staff members will follow. We hope
through this we will overcome the burden that comes with paper work.

Scarce skills

Social work has become a scarce skill the world over. Our country and
province are no exceptions. I have requested our human resource unit to
investigate and put a plan on how we are going to make up for the shortage of
skills in this field. That will include how we retain what we have both in the
profession and at institutions of learning. The team will also explore ways of
recruiting more people into the profession.

Partnership with business

In today’s global society, business interests increasingly overlap with
development objectives, however, the Department’s efforts have not effectively
taken this transition into account and therefore the full potential of the
private sector remains untapped. Business operations from micro enterprises to
multinational corporations should be engaged to contribute towards societal
development priorities.

Many companies are demonstrating best practice by voluntarily taking a
closer look at the role they play and how they might begin to contribute
through their core business operations to the social development priorities.
They will harness business involvement in the realisation of these
priorities.

South African Social Security Agency (SASSA)

Various studies have demonstrated that social assistance grants have had the
greatest impact on poverty South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) in
partnership with the Department will continue to ensure that those eligible for
social grants receive them. On 1 April 2006 social security relocated in the
national Department of Social Development.

The province has in excess of a million people receiving social assistance
grants with over 900 000 children currently benefiting.

We transferred a system with integrity, where fraudulent recipients of
grants were removed with a turnaround time of 21 day for grant applications;
waiting times of not more than 30 minutes for grant payments and facilities
that are equipped with chairs, toilets and first aid facilities for grant
recipients. An agreement has been reached whereby our Department will continue
to provide the necessary human resource, finance and procurement support to
SASSA Gauteng until such time as is able to function independently.

Investment in children

Mr Speaker, every society has a duty to invest in its children. We do so for
the simple reason that it sustains society and makes the future predictable.
Section 28 of our constitution enjoins us when it states that “every child has
a right to survival, development, protection and participation.” Investment in
children is crucial if they are to achieve their full potential and become
productive citizens in the future.

Statistics reveal that almost half of our province’s children live in poor
households. This is instructive of the fact that our approach to children must
be multi pronged.

The enactment of the Children’s Bill is another milestone in the quest to
ensure that every child grows to realise their full potential in life. The new
Children’s Bill lays a legislative foundation that contributes not only to the
protection of children’s rights, but also to government’s goal of human capital
investment. This is essential to enable government to respond adequately to the
challenging social realities facing children, families and communities in South
Africa.

The Children’s Bill gives effect to the constitutional rights of children to
appropriate alternative care when removed from the family environment to social
services and protection from maltreatment, neglect, abuse or degradation. It
determines principles and guidelines for the care and protection of all
children.

The bill also seeks to promote the preservation and strengthening of
families and it recognises the special needs of children with disabilities. It
provides for the strengthening and development of community structures in the
provision of care and protection to children and underlines the country’s
obligations regarding the well being of children in terms of international
conventions which regulates inter country adoptions, child abductions and child
trafficking.

The Child Justice Bill makes provision in the criminal justice process for
those children accused of committing offences. It protects the rights of
children entrenched in the Constitution by providing for the minimum age of
criminal capacity of such children, to incorporate diversion of cases away from
formal court procedures as a central feature of the process, to establish
assessment of children and a preliminary inquiry as compulsory procedures, to
provide that children must be tried in child justice courts and to extend the
sentencing options available in respect of children and to entrench the notion
of restorative justice in respect of children.

The promulgation of the bills will ensure the building of the protective
environment for children and law based approaches emphasising the importance of
knowing and understanding and accepting legal standards in child
protection.

Our budget seeks to ensure that children get the best possible start in life
and have ample opportunity to develop their individual capacities in a safe and
supportive environment. In strengthening that effort the Department is expected
to present a provincial programme of action for children to the provincial
Executive Council (ExCo) for consideration.

Over the next Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) the Department has
been allocated R1,2 billion to render care, protection and developmental
services to children. The annual breakdown is as follows:

2006/07: R309,151,000
2007/08: R355,691,000
2008/09: R454,933,000

This forms the greatest proportion of our budget and is guided by the
principle of allocative efficiency, meaning prioritising programmes that yield
the greatest results.

According to the Mid Year Population Estimates South Africa 2005, Gauteng
has 3 038 200 or 14,68 percent of the children in South Africa under the age of
19.

Bana Pele

This programme has been developed as a two pronged approach. First it should
enable us to offer the very essential services to vulnerable and orphaned
children who are under no family care. Secondly as a poverty alleviation
measure that benefits in particular women that provide school uniform and
prepare meals for the kids at schools. The programmes include the child support
grants, school fee exemption, free health care, school uniforms, school feeding
and psycho social support. The Bana Pele is a cross departmental
initiative.

Central to the programme is the identification, referral and tracking of
children between the service providers. The intention is that if a child in
this category is processed by one department for a particular service, upon
qualification for that service the child must automatically qualify for a
particular package of services from across all the relevant departments. During
the launch of this programme by the Premier, he announced that vulnerable
children especially orphans will be able to access a package of services
through a “single window.”

We are now in the process of putting the programme through an automated web
based system. This will enable the different department’s computer systems to
talk to one another and better enable us to deliver efficiently to this
category of children. In July we hope to put up a pilot project in Sedibeng
District and roll out the system in September.

Currently, the programme has managed to reach the following:

i) Social security

The number of children accessing social grants has increased in Gauteng.
These include is 850 604 children between the ages of 0 - 14 years receiving
child support grants (CSG).

The number of children receiving foster care grants (FCG) has increased to
39 072 as the HIV and AIDS pandemic becomes more evident.

ii) Psychosocial counselling

32 954 children received psycho social counselling.

iii) Exemption from school fees

310 881 children in quintile one primary schools were exempted from school
fees.

iv) School nutrition programme

This programme reached a total of 359 613 learners at 1107 schools. A
further 58 404 pre-school children received meals in 1695 crèches across
Gauteng. Currently 94 percent (378 298) of the targeted 400 866 learners from 1
139 schools are benefiting from school nutrition programme while 100 percent
feeding takes place at farm, rural areas and informal settlement schools.

v) School uniform programme

The Department has met the target of provision of school uniforms to 38 231
children targeted in grade one quintile one schools. This project has had
important economic and development and capacity building spin offs in that
women’s groups were contracted to supply the uniform packs for children. This
programme currently benefits nearly a thousand women who previously had no
income.

vi) Scholar transport

Scholar transport is provided to ensure that each learner within the
province has access to education. Scholar transport has been provided to 66 381
learners in both primary and secondary schools across all 12 districts in the
province. The provision of transport has ensured access to education for
learners that reside in farm, rural or informal settlements where the nearest
public school is more than five kilometres from their place of residence.

Early childhood development (ECD)

Early childhood development (ECD) programmes are programmes that governments
and civil society undertake to nurture a child in their earliest year in life.
Research has established that it is important that a child is properly
developed in the tender age of zero to six years. If we miss out at this age,
that may impact negatively on the ability of the child in later years.
Therefore, this is not a luxury contrary to the perception presented in many
poor communities. It is a need in which governments must lead.

The Department provides services to 19 915 children in 270 registered
crèches (ECD facilities) in terms of Child Care Act. ECD services includes the
site based early childhood programmes, home based programme, programmes on
basic child care skills, educational stimulation, toy library and other child
minding services.

Over 43 developing ECD facilities in poorer communities have received
funding through the Integrated Social Development Programme (ISDP) to ensure
the improvement in the standard of service delivery to ensure registration with
the Department. The Department has also registered 330 private crèches which
provide services to 4500 children thus ensuring a standard of child care for
all children.

There is a need to improve levels of implementation and therefore ensure
that a majority of qualifying children benefit from the programme. An even
greater challenge lies in the sites located in informal urban settlements. The
expansion of this programme remains a key challenge for the Department. The
Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) for ECD will be the catalyst for the
extension of this programme.

The ECD together with Community Home Based Care are allocated a budget of
190 million over the MTEF for the expansion of this programme.

Social protection for children

Children subjected to violence and exploitation abuse and neglect are at
risk of death, poor physical and mental health, HIV and Aids and infection
impact on them most severely. They are also subjected to educational problems,
displacement, homelessness and if they survive childhood do not have proper
parenting skills. As a result it has become crucial to break the cycle and to
ensure the social protection of children.

The call is basically to build a protective environment for the children to
prevent them from hardships of hunger, the vagaries of weather patterns,
violence and all sorts of ills.

We are presently subsidising 61 children homes which offer accommodation to
approximately 3 600 children. This financial year we will increase our subsidy
from 61 to 65 children homes. In further response the Department has developed
98 Community Based Care (CBC) programmes focusing on 151 236 orphans and
vulnerable children infected and affected by HIV and AIDS. This fiscal year
will see an increased effort in the provision of home based care services to
children who require the services.

Foster care

The Department and its social service partners have provided foster care
services to 39 072 children in the province. Due to shortage of social workers
in the province and the tedious process of the justice system, we are
experiencing a backlog of close to 22 000. However, we do provide relief from
our Social Relief of Distress Fund to those families affected by the
backlog.

I have convened the relevant unit in the Department to discuss plans of how
we bring an end to this backlog. They will be presenting the full plan,
programme and what it will cost to break the backlog by end of the current
financial year.

Adoption

This is a national competence rendered by the national Department of Social
Development through accredited Non Profit Organisations (NPOs). The Department
provides a subsidy to these NPOs and monitors their service delivery. There are
870 adoption cases processed and finalised during 2005/2006.

Shelters for children living and working on the streets

Children living and working on the streets were prioritised. A lot of work
was completed and 21 shelters offering accommodation to 804 children were
registered. To assist with the early identification of children on the streets
42 outreach workers were appointed on a two-year contract. From the work
conducted there is a trend of an increase in foreign children living on the
streets thus complicating communication and re-unification services. Substance
abuse is common amongst these children.

I have since requested the Department that we conduct research in this area
to establish the categories of the people living and working in the streets,
their patterns of lifestyles and to separate the children from the young
adults. Furthermore this research will establish how they earn their means of
survival. Through this targeted data we will be in a better position to work on
approaches to the problem and avoid applying one solution to all.

Through the Integrated Social Development Programme (ISDP) we plan to work
with communities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local government to
create alternate lifestyles and develop skills for 1042 youth living and
working on the streets.

They will be involved in the following programme:

Metropolitan Evangelical Social Services, a faith based organisation (FBO)
in Johannesburg, will accommodate 440 young people in various skills ranging
from job preparation, micro masters of Business administration (MBA) and
computer literacy.

Bosasa Youth Facility has taken 175 young people to train them in different
skill ranging from plumbing, catering and welding.

Self Help Centre in Tshwane has taken 160 youth and is training them in
skills such as motor mechanic, auto electrical engineering and panel
beating.

Children in conflict with the law

The aim of the model used to provide services to children in conflict with
the law is to reduce incarceration and promote restorative justice. The
rehabilitation of children and involvement of families and communities is
promoted as safer and more appropriate and effective measures to dealing with
troubled children. Our province has made strides in this programme over the
last few years with an increase in residential options, diversion and community
based options for children.

The Department rendered probation services to 8 894 children through
assessments, pre-trial services, statutory supervision and diversion services
in the past year. There are eight non-governmental partners who assist with the
provision of diversion programmes for children. The Department has embarked on
a diversion programme called the Home Supervision for Children awaiting trial
in this budget year. The current emphasis is to move children under the age of
18 years out of prison to youth development facilities to ensure the
rehabilitation of youth in communities in the long term .The aim of the
programme is to maintain children in their homes under strict conditions
instead of placing them in secure care centres. This programme has had an
impact on the children who have been returned to the care of their parents. At
present the programme has accommodated 1052 children accumulatively. Through
this programme the number of children in correctional facilities had dropped
from 2000 to 207.

The Department will in this financial year undertake the integrated planning
with the Department of Public Works and Transport for the replacement of the
two secure care facilities in Soshanguve and Edenvale in the coming two outer
years. We have made provision totalling R2,2 million in the current financial
year for that.

Youth

Throughout history when societies struggle from one social order to the
other, the youth have always earned the honour of carrying the better yoke of
that struggle. It is therefore not surprising that after the ravages of any
struggle the youth will be the most devastated.

The same holds for the South African situation. The youth having offered
themselves as tools through which the previous oppressive regime could be
overturned they emerged the most ravaged after the settlement of that conflict
in 1994.

It is therefore just compelling that all attention must be given to this
selfless section of our population. Comrade Moses Kotane in recognition of this
sector made a clarion call to the youth during the years of apartheid I quote
“at this hour of destiny your country and your people need you. The future of
South Africa is in your hands and it will be what you make of it.”

These words ring true today as they did at the time when he uttered them and
they will continue to ring true for as long as humanity traverses this world.
Let us make the same call to them today. But this time let us call on them to
occupy the forward trenches in the struggle for reconstruction and
development.

If we do not aggressively attend to this sector we will open them to risks.
They will become vulnerable to substance abuse, crime, violence and finally
moral decay. These behaviours then persist into adulthood and result in
multiplied social problems. Idle youth finally imposes heavy costs on
society.

The Department has put together a programme for youth who are out of school.
It is implemented within the context of the National Youth Service (NYS)
programme. It provides exposure to the world of work within the public service.
Youth does voluntary work whilst being provided with a stipend.

The program will benefit 200 youth in the province. In addition to the NYS
program, the Department contributes towards youth development through its life
skills and hard skills development initiatives and the entrepreneur development
support projects and income generating projects.

The entrepreneur development programme will assist 1 000 young people to
establish business and about 20 Small Micro and Medium Enterprises (SMMEs) will
be linked for support to the Gauteng Enterprise Propeller. The skills include
financial management, SSME establishment, marketing management, project
management, plumbing and art.

We are undertaking to place 600 youth doing volunteer work in our Department
in gainful employment.

The increased allocation of R15,3 million in line with the social sector
response to the EPWP will be utilised to ensure that 1 700 volunteers are
employed on a two-year contract and are given training as care givers,
community development workers, auxiliary social workers and practitioners in
early childhood development. This is linked to 98 HIV and AIDS community home
based care sites. A significant number of these volunteers will be drawn from
young people.

Training of ECD practitioners is also one of the social sector responses to
the EPWP benefiting young people in particular women. The departments of social
development, health and education are jointly responsible for this programme.
The programme targets workers who are the unemployed and underemployed parents
and caregivers in all ECD programmes.

The objectives of the EPWP ECD focus are inter alia as follows:
* the provision of professional qualifications to 674 practitioners per year
specialising in the birth to four and four to six year age cohort through
learnerships in the MTEF period;
* skills development of all targeted support staff such as cooks, cleaners,
gardeners and administrators in ECD centres;
* subsidisation of sites for nutrition and maintenance;
* provision of resources;
* provision of contractual labour to parents of targeted schools for;
> maintenance of sites and;
> peer tutoring to other parents.

We will continue to channel young people we come into contact with in our
work to the infrastructure component of the EPWP for skills development and
work opportunity.

Learnerships and internships

In creating jobs and fighting poverty during this financial year, the
Department aims to have 150 youths in scarce skills area on internships in the
Department ‘s core functions, allocate 35 bursaries to youth pursuing careers
in scare skill occupational classes for the Department and place 125 youth in
Social Auxiliary Learnership. The learnerships programme impact positively on
the youth when the beneficiaries from the different department are added
together.

Development centres

The Department has also established and maintained 26 community based
integrated programmes at development centres in poverty pockets in local
government areas to promote sustainable livelihoods and reduce poverty and
unemployment. Development centres render a variety of services as opposed to
individual projects; they are not limited to income generating activities.

Between January and March this year the development centres combined in our
province have taken about 500 people through different skills training. They
were mainly trained on brick making, baking and catering, sewing, toilet paper
manufacturing, bead works, food garden and carpentry.

Substance abuse

The province is experiencing an increase in the number of people affected by
substance abuse. The youth form the bulk of those affected. Whilst we cope with
dealing with the cases of people who submit themselves to our institutions, we
are painfully aware that the majority of cases will not necessarily reveal
themselves to our institution.

In keeping with the approach of universal access to those who need a social
development service, the Department will in due course work out how it
capacitates itself to detect cases of substance abuse beyond the mere numbers
that we treat in institutions and then attend to them. We will also examine the
desirability of increasing the community based rehabilitation programme in
order to expand our reach.

At the moment we maintain a state rehabilitation centre which caters for
children and adults requiring in patient treatment for drug and alcohol abuse.
We further subsidise eight centres in the province.

The Department has allocated R111 million over the MTEF as an attempt to
roll back the scourge of substance abuse.

Restoring dignity to older persons

The elderly are a barometer that society can use to measure itself against.
The state of their health, education and life expectancy is a reflection of
what society was able to invest in its earlier generations.

Due to our apartheid past it goes without say that the burden of addressing
the plight of the aged is even heavier. The majority will have no savings.
Their only income is in the form of the pension grants they receive.

Older people living below the poverty line face a future of deprivation,
abuse that may be sexual, financial and economical. Whilst there is generally a
broad range of services for older persons, accessibility is still a problem
especially in the case of residential facilities.

In Gauteng 6,22 percent of the population is aged 60 years and older of whom
57,37 percent is female and 11,12 percent is older than 80 years. If the growth
of the older population in Gauteng matches the expected growth for South
Africa, the number of older persons in Gauteng could increase from 544 523 to
808 327 in the year 2025. The biggest growth can be expected amongst the
African population who live primarily in rural areas and previously
disadvantaged communities and thus constituting a policy challenge.

The Department of Social Development is in the process of promulgation of
new legislation namely the Older Persons Bill which replaces the Aged Persons
Act of 1967. This legislation adopts a developmental perspective to ageing and
will further protect and enhance the status of older persons in the community.
The bill lays grounds for us to further explore home based care as a model that
may enable us to reach out to even greater numbers of the aged people and yet
retain their integration in communities.

Residential care

The majority of homes for older persons are in the process of
transformation. The transformation includes the fact that at the level of
management and in their subsequent admission of residents they must seek to
reverse the skewed racial profile that characterised most homes in the yester
years.

There are currently 9 403 older persons living in funded residential
facilities. The province has 9859 beds in 95 Frail Care centres which are
registered and subsidised.

Community based service

In pursuance of our argument that the progressive view is that these
services should apply to all those in need, we need to explore how far we can
channel the presently established homes to reach out to the elderly who are out
of the loop utilising a community home based care model.

Older person and HIV/AIDS

Our communities have to play a role on how we treat and care for those
infected and affected by HIV and AIDS. The elderly have a role to play in
relation to HIV and AIDS. Invariably the elderly because of life experience
have the capacity to provide comfort to those in physical pain to those in need
of emotional support and to those in grief.

Their combined effort in the community can be harnessed to give care to
those children who are orphaned as a result of the pandemic and to give
emotional support to family members who are in grief. Care giving programmes
including foster care involving older women are actually on the increase. It
therefore means that there is case to be made for galvanising old aged people
into home base care for those infected and affected by HIV and AIDS.

Abuse of older persons

Wherever we become aware of a case of an abused older person we intervene
through our social workers and follow the case to the logical end. We provide a
protective measure for the victim and where possible bring the perpetrator to
book.

We have allocated R560 million over the MTEF to services for older persons.
The additional money made available by the indicative allocation will be
utilised to fund the additional services mandated in the bill.

People living with disabilities

One of the democratic values that stand out in our country is our resolve to
respect the dignity of people living with disabilities and to provide them
opportunities to reach their full potential. Their rights are enshrined in the
country’s Constitution. They are further protected in our various policy
documents and finally find expression in our implementation programmes.

We subsidise and maintain 36 facilities for persons with disabilities. We
subsidise 57 protective workshops that benefited 4 476 people living with
disabilities. Together with the NGOs we provided social work services to 8 710
persons. 5 460 persons were reached through the promotion of awareness and
advocacy programmes.

To this end we have allocated R215 million over the MTEF for this
programme.

Women

Our women folk carried the worst burden of oppression in the history of our
country. They were discriminated against under apartheid as black women. They
were exploited by the owners of the means of production as working women. They
suffered male domination as women. Progressive literature of the time
characterised this as triple oppression.

In 1984 comrade Oliver Reginald Tambo had this to say on our women folk, I
quote:

“For our part, we want to make it clear that our liberation as a people
cannot be complete unless the act of national liberation contains within it the
genuine liberation of women.”

This has to inform all areas of work we do. Rooting out abuse of women is
fundamental in guaranteeing their total liberation. Our programme provides
protection, support and care to vulnerable women. The objective of the
programme is to respond to the effects of violence against women and children
as well as the need to establish methods to deal with perpetrators.

All cases of women abuse brought to our attention have to be investigated.
Where possible bring the perpetrator to book and provide relieve to the
victim.

At the moment 9 284 victims of violence and abuse received professional
social work services as part of an integrated victim empowerment strategy. The
Victim Empowerment Forum (VEF) is supported and attended by a network of
organisations and departments. The forum serves as a valuable platform to
address issues such as crimes committed against women and children, sustain
crime prevention awareness campaigns, strengthen partnerships, monitoring the
prevalence of violence, share information and develop a database.

More than 50 percent of the funds that run the 25 shelters for abused women
in the province are subsidised by the Department. In these centres the women
are taught life skills.

We have established gender nodes to ensure capacity building programmes on
gender violence. The programmes for perpetrators who committed violent acts,
offences against women will be strengthened.

The Department and its NGO partners are involved in providing specialised
therapeutic programmes for men related to domestic violence and abuse. We have
opened a help line for all affected men to utilise and are in the process of
establishing men’s fora in all municipalities.

This budget is a special tribute we pay to the women of South Africa because
of the central role they played in liberating this country. These heroines did
not merely play a supporting role to men but acted as a conscious and militant
force of the liberation struggle even sacrificing their own lives so that we
could be free.

I would like to thank the ANC and the Premier for displaying their
confidence in appointing me as the MEC for Social Development. To thank all
staff of the Department including the management and the Head of Department for
being a pillar of strength for the short time I have been in office.

Thank you!

Issued by: Department of Social Development, Gauteng Provincial
Government
20 June 2006