Programme director
Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Ms Lulu Xingwana
Deputy Minister of Social Development Ms Maria Ntuli
MECs for Social Development present,
Director-General for Social Development, Mr Vusi Madonsela
Heads of Departments present
Representatives of academic and research institutions
Representatives from NGOs, business, and the broader Early Childhood Development (ECD) sector
ECD practitioners
Ladies and gentlemen.
It is almost sixteen years since South Africa adopted its progressive Constitution which is ranked amongst the best in the world. The Bill of Rights contained in our Constitution enshrines the rights of all persons including the recognition of human dignity, equality as well as freedom. It is in this context that government continues to promote and protect the rights of children, particularly the right to education. For this reason the current administration has put education at the apex of its priorities.
Education remains an instrument of hope through which we can chart a prosperous future for our children, against the backdrop of our bleak history of apartheid. It is worth noting that the transformation process has not gone down without hurdles, thus impacting on the ability of our children to develop to their fullest potential.
Whereas we were denied an opportunity to express and unleash our full potential through education in the past, we now have the prospects of instilling confidence and productivity in our children for them to become upstanding citizens in the future. It is in this context that our provision of Early Childhood Development (ECD) services must be integrated to deal with structural effects of the apartheid education system.
As the Department of Social Development, we are committed to the agenda of social transformation that is embodied in the principle of social justice and the Bill of Rights contained in the Constitution. The Children's Act enjoins us to ensure that children live and grow in a nurturing, secure and stable environment.
The principles of the act include respecting, protecting, promoting and fulfilling the child's rights as well as recognising a child's need for development and to engage in play and other recreational activities appropriate to the child's age.
Our government has been given a mandate by the majority of our people to deliver on the promise of a better life for all. Last year, President Jacob Zuma made a clarion call for society to protect and care for women and children. As part of our efforts to respond to this call, we launched the ECD Campaign in Mpumalanga last year to increase both awareness and access to ECD services.
We have since sought to link ECD services with the international revolution that recognises the first 1 000 days between a woman’s pregnancy and her child’s second birthday as crucial for better nutrition that can have life-changing effects on the child’s future and help break the cycle of poverty.
The realisation of government's mandate lies in the manner in which we plan and implement our programmes to respond to the pressing needs of our communities, families and individuals. This must be done in the context of President Zuma’s message in the State of the Nation Address, to tackle poverty, inequality and unemployment.
We must ensure that our efforts to expand access to ECD services take into account the need to fight the triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment. Research has shown that the first five years of a child’s life shapes their future and that early learning provide children with opportunities to reach their health, learning and social development potential.
We currently have more than 836 000 children benefiting from ECD services in South Africa. By the end of December last year, more than 488 000 of these children were benefiting from our subsidy compared to about 476 000 in March 2011. By the end of last year, we had more than 19 500 ECD centres across the country compared to over 18 800 in March 2011. Our aim is to provide comprehensive services as a means to improve the country’s human capital and reduce intergenerational poverty.
We are also aware that ECD centres greatly relieve working and job-seeking mothers during the day and therefore it is important that we ensure that parents trust that their children are in safe hands.
Ladies and gentlemen
We must ensure that ECD is linked to other development-based programmes of government. In this regard we need to stipulate clearly a national roll-out programme, particularly located within the context of Comprehensive Rural Development, integrating other services that flow from different departments, South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) and the National Development Agency (NDA).
This roll-out strategy has to be two-fold.
There has to be massive education campaign, largely focused on women in the rural areas and selective peri-urban and urban areas like informal settlements that are generally regarded as hot-spots in terms of the government’s poverty and malnutrition eradication programmes.
In short, our education campaign must not be an isolated initiative. It must picky-bag and interweave with various existing rural development and urban renewal programmes. It must begin to create a platform for us to popularise and elevate it at a public engagement level.
The education campaign must be multi-faceted, including not only communities, but also a network of structures (such as statutory and non-statutory organisations) that could play a role in the basic protection or strengthening of the family structure, forging dynamic partnerships and community bonds that could re-inculcate proper societal values, moral regeneration as well as reintegrating older persons with young people.
In this way, the campaign will demonstrate a graphic picture of a government that truly embodies social cohesion and social mobilisation initiatives aimed at enhancing Early Childhood Development in the country.
The special protection groups or entities such as those that are actively involved with vulnerable children and people with disabilities must also constitute the primary target of this education campaign. There must be plans for the universalisation of Early Childhood Development, thereby placing us on a platform where we begin to practically shift ECD from the private domain into the public domain.
This means we must clearly state how, as different departments and entities of government, we will put in place a range of services that will support young children, women, households and care-givers including the programme to support and statutorily recognise the community-based Early Childhood Centres that already exist in the rural areas.
This must include a sharply focused programme on child-headed households. Again, this must describe and show an inter-sectoral approach essentially premised on a collaborative working relationship with between the Departments of Social Development, Justice, Health, Basic Education, Education, Agriculture as well as Sport and Recreation, among others.
Ladies and gentlemen,
We must emphasise that all ECD centres have to operate within the laws of this country. All people who work with children must be checked against the register of people previously convicted for cases relating to child abuse. These employees must be screened to verify and confirm their status for purposes of child protection.
One of our priorities for the ECD sector is to ensure transformation, starting with the review of subsidies to ensure standardisation. We do so mindful that our subsidy also benefits orphaned and vulnerable children, as well as children with disabilities. There is also a need to ensure that all service providers in the sector are capacitated to deliver in line with government’s set standards and expectations. An important element of this work has to focus on developing a coherent curriculum for ECD.
Government remains concerned about unregistered ECD centres. We reiterate that our aim is to strengthen all centres hence we call on the unregistered ones to register. This will advance our vision to provide transformed, integrated, and accessible and quality partial care and ECD services in partnership with stakeholders outside government. As we deliberate in this conference, we must remember the international commitments we made towards the realisation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
For us, access to ECD services will help meet the following MDGs in respect of the well-being of children:
- halving the percentage of children who suffer hunger
- reducing by two-thirds the rate at which children under five are dying
- cutting the maternal mortality rate by three quarters
- ensuring all children have the chance to complete primary school; and
- eliminating gender disparities in schooling opportunities
South Africa is also a signatory to some international conventions such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Convention on the Right of a Child as well as the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Through United Nations Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations continues to work with us in advocating for the protection of children’s rights, to help meet their basic needs and expand their opportunities to reach their full potential.
The conventions we have signed also embrace the rights of the disabled children, theright to education with focus on the promotion and development of the child’s personality, talent as well as mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential.
In conclusion, we are hopeful that this conference will provide a platform for all stakeholders to discuss and find solutions to the many challenges facing the sector. We also urge all ECD practitioners to familiarise themselves with the key elements of the Children’s Act, which are care, support, protection and development.
Let us work together to increase the number of children who benefit from ECD services in rural and informal settlements.
Thank you.
