MALAIKA MAHLATSI | Commending number of social grant beneficiaries is not celebrating poverty

Last weekend, in his January 8 statement delivered in Mbombela, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa counted among the successes of the ANC-led government the quantitative growth of beneficiaries of social grants. This statement gave birth to a discussion that has taken a life of its own, with many arguing that Ramaphosa is celebrating poverty in our country as beneficiaries of social grants are indigent people.

This interpretation of the statement begs for engagement because I listened to the same speech and heard a completely different argument. What Ramaphosa was saying is that in 1994, the ANC inherited a country in which only 2-million people were receiving assistance from the state. This is because in pre-1994 SA, state assistance and social welfare were provided to a few on the basis of their race.

For decades, only white people could access social welfare because they alone had citizenship rights in our country. Black people, stripped of their citizenship and reduced to being “citizens” of homelands that were never given international or regional recognition, were left disenfranchised and in poverty by the apartheid regime. It was only in the democratic dispensation that universal social welfare for all deserving people was made available.

The argument that Ramaphosa was making, therefore, is that in the democratic era, all South Africans are able to receive state assistance. Commending that 17-million people receive some form of social grants is not a celebration of people being in poverty but rather, celebrating the democratisation of social welfare and the ability of the state to administer it.

Social welfare is the recognition that we have indigent people in our midst who would not survive without the intervention of the state to provide them the bare minimum to not starve. It is provided for in even the most developed of countries – Germany, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the US, Canada, France, Sweden etc.

In fact, the social welfare model is called “The Swedish Model” precisely because it was in that Scandinavian country that social welfare was perfected and demonstrated efficacy. Since then, even developing countries have sought to adapt some aspects of this model to cushion poor people from abject poverty.

The history of SA makes it inevitable that we would have such a huge social welfare burden. It wasn’t until just 30 years ago that we became a democratic state – one that inherited the legacy of 342 years of colonialism. The legacy of separate development meant that black people in particular were uneducated, unskilled, indebted and poor.

If it wasn’t for social grants, we would have entire generations of people living in a permanent state of poverty. And while social grants have not eliminated poverty for many reasons that we could discuss, including that the money provided is still below the poverty line, they have decreased it and offered millions of families a much-needed cushion against food insecurity and hunger.

When only white people, in this very SA were on social grants, it was understood to be the result of structural constructs rooted in income and other material inequities. When black people, who have been on the receiving end of colonialism and made disabled by racialised capitalism, receive social grants, it’s presented as the celebration of poverty and a moral failure on their part.

This is a very dangerous line of reasoning that seeks to pathologise black people. I understand that we have entered silly season and that elections have a tendency to make us discard all objective reason, but we must not, even in our legitimate criticism of the ANC government, subconsciously pathologise black people and make it seem as if they have no geo-history that informs their current state of indigence that necessitates social assistance.