Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Wednesday September 03, 2003
Toby Reynolds

Many of them reek of alcohol and bear the scars of the previous night's arguments. They crowd around their visitor, clamoring with questions about their childcare grants and disability allowances.

"We have no money ... To live we have to borrow from men who ask 50 cents per rand," said one man, dressed in rags, who added that he spent almost all of his meager income on interest payments to loan sharks.

For the minister, Zola Skweyiya, the complaints of these poor people illustrate a wider problem of poverty that is facing South Africa's government.

Nine years after apartheid ended, poverty remains a major feature of South African life and presents a growing political challenge for a government with an election to fight next year.

Unemployment -- officially estimated at 30 percent -- and HIV/AIDS have robbed thousands of households of breadwinners, and World Bank figures show almost half the population lives on less than $2 a day.

Many of those downtrodden by South Africa's old regime hoped the arrival of democracy and majority rule in 1994 would bring them a new standard of living.

But while the government has made great strides in introducing basic services like water and electricity to millions of people, many others have not benefited significantly in material terms, remaining jobless, impoverished and dissatisfied.

"Poverty is the main, main thing in South Africa," Skweyiya told Reuters on the way back from Beaufort West, where authorities say as many as two-thirds of the 35,000-odd population depend on state grants to survive.

Other regions suffer even more, particularly in the black areas of the Eastern Cape province that were left particularly undeveloped by apartheid's racial segregation policies.

With an election due in 2004, the ruling African National Congress will have to take poverty seriously. The party has such strong support that it is likely to carry off next year's vote whatever it does, but failure to address the problems of the poor will undermine its mandate for the future, analysts say.

"The main political consequence will be people disengaging from politics...and everybody should be worried about declining interest in the political system," said Tom Lodge, political science professor at the University of the Witwatersrand.

"If they don't do something now, then in five or six years' time the ANC may encounter a new urban opposition," he added.

LIMITED CAPACITY

The ANC government has targeted poverty as a key issue, underlined by President Thabo Mbeki's references to a country of "two nations, one well-off and white and the other poor and black."

In fact, many blacks have gained substantially, but there is still a huge gap between the rich and the poor.

Skweyiya said the government aimed to spend 1.5 billion rand ($207 million) on poverty alleviation projects this year, as part of 22 billion rand of social security spending.

But efforts to uplift the poorest people are hampered by the government's limited capabilities on the ground, particularly in poor regions where ignorance, paperwork, and weak or overstretched local authorities get in the way of distribution.

Skweyiya said he hoped a new comprehensive social security agency, which would improve delivery by bringing control of all grants under the same roof, would be up and running in the next three to four years.

SOCIAL SECURITY A NOVELTY

For many black South Africans the new social security systems are a relative novelty -- as is the idea that local government officials were there to help them.

"The majority of South Africans have not been used to the councilors ... Among Africans it was never there before 1994," Skweyiya said.

In rural areas, efforts to help the poor are also confused by the uncertain role of traditional authorities -- the country's chiefs and kings -- and their relationship to elected officials.

Efforts to help poor people are often run through the traditional leaders, many of whom are less than perfect public servants.

Much of the government effort is now channeled through community groups, particularly through churches and faith-based organizations. But the confusion and inefficiency leads to situations like the pleas of the Beaufort West poor.

"In the last four years there have been more demands. Before then people were very passive," Skweyiya said.

"(That they ask me) is an improvement...But we are trying to say 'go to this councilor here,' that they should address things on that level first, they should not wait for a minister to come." ($1=7.245 Rand)

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