K Lekgoro: SALGA Gauteng Social Development Working Group
meeting

20 September 2006

Social development is a tool used by governments to create a net that will
capture those in society who will not survive without government intervention
due to a variety of reasons.

It may be that they are orphaned, old, disabled or suffered exclusion as a
result of a particular social and economic order. The popular terms used are
the vulnerable and poor people.

In a communist utopia I guess everybody would be so equal that you either
have no poor and vulnerable people or you are all poor and vulnerable. The
government will either have no such social development problems to deal with or
all that government does would be about social development.

Governments like ours, that opted for a capitalist order or if it pleases
you, a mixed economy, will at all fronts strategise and work in such a way that
minimises the growth in numbers of the poor and vulnerable.

That is more or less the background against which the Gauteng government
conceived the Social Development Strategy. As the head of department later
takes you through the detailed presentation, you will notice how we look at the
totality of government's role in this strategy.

We first acknowledge that an overall attack on poverty is through economic
growth and development. We also take the view in our strategy that all round
government work on strategic areas such as developing people as a resource,
promoting a healthy people, social crime prevention, building communities that
are conducive for people to live in, proper attention to children, the aged and
those who live with disabilities, preventing and treating HIV and AIDS and
poverty alleviating programme, all form important blocks of a social
development strategy.

Our approach as you will see is that government all round must work in such
a way that will mitigate or erode all conditions that will bring about people
who cannot depend on themselves. If our people are healthy, they develop their
resourcefulness, they live under crime free conditions, the economy is growing
and development is growing, we are assured that the majority of the citizens
will be able to depend on themselves.

For those who for different reasons are included in those I mentioned
earlier, are not able to depend on themselves, government is obliged to create
a safety net for them. That safety net is generally known as social welfare. I
will later come back to this subject.

As you will notice, our approach is that this is Social Development Strategy
for Gauteng government and not a strategy for the Department of Social
Development. The implementation of the strategy is also dependent on the
participation and contribution of all departments in the Gauteng government.
This is a radical departure from the past practice of government working in
silos in their own departments to a more integrated approach to government
work.

The strategy rests on what we characterise as strategic levers. These areas
which we believe if we leverage through government programmes and projects,
they will have a multiplier effect and that will be for the common good of our
province.

We also take a whole life and whole government approach. Whole life approach
means that we identity social development needs for citizens from when life
begins to when it ends. On whole government we mean that all departments and
institutions of government have a role to play albeit in varying degrees in the
different strategic levers.

In each lever we state what strategic object is and what we will do to
realise that objective, and finally what interdepartmental structure we will
put up to undertake those tasks.

Chairperson, if my information is accurate, I am in a meeting of the Social
Development Working Group of SALGA. If that be the case, I hope you will find
it in order that I take this opportunity to interact with yourselves on how at
the provincial level we seek to situate the department in order to meet the
challenges of our time.

You are all aware that the name of the department has now changed from
Social Welfare and Population Development to Social Development. That since the
first of April this year social security which covers paying of social grants
has been taken over by South African Social Security Agency (SASSA).

The irony is that paying of social grants constituted 80% of the
department's budget, whereas the rest of what we are left with had constituted
only 20% of the department's budget. So from April this year the 20% budget
became our full departmental budget. What under previous circumstance would
have been regarded as 20% of our work has now translated in 100% of our
work.

Whilst before in practice issues of orphaned and vulnerable children,
children living and working in the streets, substance abuse, children heading
households, the aged, abused women, children and old people, people infected
and affected by HIV and AIDS were but an area of work that received 20% of our
attention, it must now receive 100% of our attention.

This new situation has imposed on us the challenge of examining how we can
maximise government's role in social services so as to stretch the safety net
beyond security services. Attendant to this challenge was a choice between
social welfare and social developmental option.

Our change of name from Social Welfare and Population Development to Social
Development is a clear indication of a shift away from a welfare system that
offers handouts to the poor and vulnerable to a solution that maximises the
capacity of the individual, the household and the community to participate in
ordering their lives for the better. So we argue that ours is a developmental
approach as opposed to a welfare approach.

It is against this background that we seek to make a break from the
institutional framework we are entrenched in, to a community home based care
system. We argue that with institutional framework we are less likely to reach
out to the lot of the people who need government intervention in order to
address their plight.

The two examples that I always use to back my argument is in the case of the
aged. To put up and sustain an old age home is costly. In our province they are
very few and cater for a little over 10 000 clients in a province where over
one million people need those services. Stretching these institutions to cover
that need is an unattainable goal. Allowing and enabling communities to tackle
the issue of how they give lasting care to their aged might be an attainable
goal.

The same can be said for early childhood development. There are more than
800 000 children in need of these services in the province. By June this year
we could only account for a little over 20 000 children under government
programmes. Clearly, unless something is done we are losing the plot.

Research has established that there is scientific proof that a child who
does not enjoy opportunities offered by early childhood development programmes
faces heavy odds in growing into a productive and capable adult. If this is the
case then early childhood development is a right not a privilege. The quickest
way of closing this gap is by allowing and enabling communities to participate
in this important task.

A challenge that faces us in the approach to community home based care
programmes is the non-availability of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in
the previously disadvantaged communities. Where they exist, their capability
and sustainability is a serious challenge. This weakens our desire to an option
of community home based care. As a result of this situation your traditional
white NGOs avail themselves as vehicles to go into these previously
disadvantaged communities.

Not that there in something inherently wrong with that. This raises two
important tasks for us. Where the traditionally white NGOs have the goodwill to
render service in the previously disadvantaged communities, we must ensure that
they do not continue the dependency of those communities on them but that they
impart the skills and capacity to interested groups in these communities to on
their own run and sustain such organisations.

The alternative task is that we identify groups in these communities that
would be equipped to equal this task. If we fail on this task we will fail in
transforming an important area of delivery. The fact of the matter is that
provincial government alone will not succeed on this task without the central
role of local government.

Chairperson in conclusion let me sketch for you what the department will
focus on from now to the end of our term in 2009. We are going to multiply our
outreach and intake of children into of Early Childhood Development (ECD) site
in the previously disadvantaged communities. We will use multi pronged
approach. We will register and subsidise day care facilities for children. We
will mobilise for the establishment of formal ECD sites in the twenty
prioritised townships. We will identify practitioners to be trained for this
purpose. For us to succeed we need local government as a partner and not only
as inspectors who apply by-laws to obstruct this noble intention.

We will set up day-care programmes in as many localities as we can help
alleviate the plight of children who are heading households as a result of the
HIV/AIDS pandemic. We are going to establish day-care programmes in the 20
prioritised townships for the aged. Other ordinary work of the department will
continue, but these will be our flagship projects.

I wish to make a call to councillors. Go to your locality; identify one of
the programmes I have mentioned. Identify community members (and please not
your political party colleagues who help to sustain your position in your
organisation) but respected community members whose capacity will help us
sustain these programmes. Then approach the MEC's office and let us see how we
take the matter forward.

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