Draft discussion document

Policy Conference
2020
Economic Justice: A Sustainable Development Goal Model
Our plan for South Africa to beat the past and build the future.

1976 2020 2030

 CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 4
CURRENT LEGISLATION VS. ECONOMIC JUSTICE MODEL 8

1. INEQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY: AN ENDURING LEGACY 9

1.1 A FAILED, CRONY STATE 10
1.2 POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 10
1.3 UNEMPLOYMENT 12
1.4 THE BREAKDOWN OF THE FAMILY 14
1.5 HEALTH INEQUALITY 16
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1.6 MALNUTRITION AND STUNTING 17
1.7 SPATIAL INEQUALITY 17
1.8 DISCRIMINATION 18
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2. EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY: HOW WE CAN BEAT THE PAST AND BUILD THE FUTURE 20
2.1 EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY 21
2.2 PROMOTING EQUAL OPPORTUNITY THROUGH SDGs 22
2.3 GOVERNMENT SDG PRIORITIES 26
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2.3.1 Building a capable state 26

2.3.2 Unemployment 26
2.3.3 Education: Increasing time spent in education and teacher quality 28
2.3.4 Wealth inequality 29
2.3.5 Mending the family 30
2.3.6 Health: Equalising access to quality healthcare 31
2.3.7 Early childhood malnutrition: Putting an end to stunting 32
2.3.8 Spatial inequality 33
2.3.9 Discrimination 34

3. CONCLUSION 35

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 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

An economically just society is one in which economic opportunities are available to all, and people
have the capabilities to make use of those opportunities. We are not there yet. South Africa is still an
economically unjust society. Due to a history of apartheid as well as governance failures and corruption
in the democratic era, there are skewed and shrinking opportunities. South Africa desperately needs a
radically different approach to redress and inclusion. Over two decades of political freedom have not
resulted in adequate improvement in the socio-economic prospects of the majority of South Africans.

If we wish to create an economically inclusive and non-racial South Africa, we must address
inequalities of opportunity to complement our hard-won political freedoms. Currently, we are failing to
overcome our past; poor governance, corruption, and race-based policies have enabled elite enrichment
and the disintegration of the state at the expense of broad-based prosperity. Since people do not
move from one racial category to another once empowered, current policies enable them to benefit in
perpetuity. For many people there is a recognition that race classification was an apartheid evil. But some
also believe that it remains a necessary evil to address the economic legacy of apartheid. No political
party has ever put before the public a policy which would address the legacy of economic exclusion
while simultaneously freeing South Africans from apartheid race classification. If there is a possibility that
we can achieve both these noble goals, we must do so.

We know what stands in the way of economic inclusion; there are longstanding inequalities which
have their roots in an apartheid and colonial past, and which have been exacerbated by an incapable
and corrupt state. The key drivers of inequality of opportunity in South Africa are well established, and
include:

• A failed, crony state.

• Poverty.
• Unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment.
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• Low duration of time spent in education and low quality of educational outcomes.
• Wealth inequality caused by low savings and investments, as well as the fact that the majority of
South Africans were prevented from accumulating intergenerational wealth.
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• The breakdown of the family.

• Inequalities in health.
• Childhood stunting.
• Spatial inequalities caused by apartheid spatial design, and perpetuated by failed land reform.
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• A history of legislated discrimination.

Addressing these challenges requires a “whole-of-society” approach. It requires government, business,

communities, families and individuals to work hand-in-hand to overcome them. One of the most powerful
ways government can amplify its impact is to leverage private sector involvement through procurement;
that is in the way it selects the companies it chooses to do business with. Where competing companies
can provide goods or services at the same level of functionality and price, this policy would give
preference to the company which makes the most positive socio-economic impact as measured by the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Our promise, however, is that competence will take priority in procurement; as unfulfilled or poorly
delivered contracts hurt those most reliant on government services.

Current policies mistakenly rely on ‘trickle down redress’. Trickle down redress is the idea that using
corporates to transfer assets, positions, and contracts from one elite to another will promote economic
inclusion. This strategy has not worked and has done little to address the true drivers of inequality
of opportunity. Those who benefit most from current attempts at redress tend to be already well off,
politically connected, and/or in skilled employment. This leaves the vast majority of South Africans
excluded as beneficiaries.

The solution lies in an approach which would address the key drivers of inequality of opportunity
highlighted above, as well as broader socio-economic needs. This leads us to proposing the United
Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as the framework for redress.

Corporate contributions to achieving the SDGs will make a greater impact to the lives of South
Africans than the narrow requirements of the BBBEE scorecard. The SDGs provide all countries with a
framework to address 17 systemic drivers of exclusion in a sustainable manner.

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1. No poverty: End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
2. Zero hunger: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable
agriculture.
3. Good health and well-being: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
4. Quality education: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning
opportunities for all.
5. Gender equality: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
6. Clean water and sanitation: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation
for all.
7. Affordable and clean energy: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy
for all.
8. Decent work and economic growth: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth,
full and productive employment and decent work for all.
9. Industry, innovation, and infrastructure: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and
sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.
10. Reduced inequalities: Reduce inequality within and among countries.
11. Sustainable cities and communities: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and
sustainable.
12. Responsible consumption and production: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
13. Climate action: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*.
14. Life below water: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for
sustainable development.
15. Life on land: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably
manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity
loss.
16. Peace, justice, and strong institutions: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable
development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive
institutions at all levels.
17. Partnerships for the goals: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global
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partnership for sustainable development.

The SDGs offer a useful, internationally recognised and supported framework for every stakeholder to
identify and address the goals they are best fit to address. This is what we mean by a whole-of-society
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approach.

Where it is necessary to identify specific beneficiaries, they should be identified through means testing
to ensure that interventions reach those who are truly in need. Means testing includes non-exhaustive
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indicators such as income status, geographic location, school quintile, net assets, number of dependents,
and access to basic services.

While the achievement of all the SDGs is important, it is necessary to articulate priorities. Companies
would be encouraged to set their own priorities in line with the areas they have the most impact on;
taking into consideration factors such as sectoral priorities, the company value chain, and their business
model etc.

In government we would also need to set our own priorities. Our priority interventions in government
must be geared to address the key drivers of inequality of opportunity. They are as follows:

Build a lean and capable state based on liberal democratic principles (SDG 16)
• Reduce the number of ministries.
• Instill a culture of excellence in the civil service, and hire based on competence not connections.
• Establish an independent corruption-fighting body with investigative and prosecutorial arms, each
reporting to SAPS and the NPA respectively. The unit as a whole should be answerable to parliament.
• Require the appointment and removal of the NDPP to happen via a resolution of Parliament.
• Implement lifestyle audits for all politicians and government officials above a certain level, or
suspected of fraud and/or corruption, as well as doing annual lifestyle audits for government officials
selected randomly, by a similar process as that through which SARS identifies taxpayers for auditing.

Increase employment (SDG 8)

• Implement growth and investment reforms which drive job creation.
• Introduce voluntary exemptions from sectorally determined wages for workers who have been
unemployed for longer than 12 months in order to open up the market for low-skill, low-wage work.

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Pursue world-class educational outcomes (SDG 4)
• Increase the duration of time spent learning by limiting teacher strikes during school hours, ensuring
girls do not miss school days due to menstruation, and eliminating school dropouts by adopting a
‘whole school approach’.
• Improve teaching quality by promoting careers in education for top learners, introducing competency
testing for teachers, attracting skilled foreigners into the teaching profession, increasing the use of
technology to support teaching, and linking teacher remuneration with performance.

Reduce wealth inequality (SDG 10)

• Improve levels of financial literacy.
• Ensure legislation supports employee share ownership.
• Explore pension fund for the unemployed.
• Ensure state pensions are managed responsibly with the primary goal to generate the highest returns
possible for members.
• Lower the barriers to entry for accessing investment products.

Address the breakdown of the family (SDG 5, 11)

• Introduce shared parental leave.
• Enforce maintenance payments.
• Reduce teenage and unwanted pregnancies.
• Boost urban housing opportunities so families can live together.

Ensure universal access to quality healthcare (SDG 3)

• Provide a universal healthcare subsidy for citizens and legal residents to finance public or private
healthcare.

Eradicate childhood stunting (SDG 2)

• Introduce a food grant to ensure that the child grant stretches to the food poverty line.
• Provide information to recipients about appropriate nutrition.
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Minimise spatial inequality and provide for land reparations (SDG 11)
• Redistribute state-owned land, particularly in well-located urban areas, in order to provide housing for
the poor and employed who would otherwise not be able to afford inner-city housing.
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• Allocate greater resources to land reform than it currently enjoys in the budget, in particular relative
to non-essential line items such as VIP security.
• Recognise, record and administer a continuum of rights to land. The DA supports recognising a wider
range of rights than those contained in the deeds registry system.
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• Prevent arbitrary dispossession of land and ensure that the benefits which arise from communal land
goes to those who live on it. We support the review of the Ingonyama Trust Act, which would lead to
its amendment or repeal as per the High Level Panel report.
• Complete restitution claims filed in the original period.

Zero tolerance for discrimination (SDG 10)

• Recruit in order to consciously broaden the pool of applicants.
• Provide equal opportunities within the workplace for training, development, and mentorship.
• Enhance social cohesion by ensuring every South African is able to speak English along with one
other indigenous language.

It cannot be stressed enough that we must pursue inclusion through growth. A growing economy is the
frontline of the fight for inclusion. Without improving South Africa’s economic prospects there can only
be shared misery instead of shared prosperity.

South Africa has no fiscal room to maneuver; we cannot borrow or spend our way to a better future but
there is enormous potential to attract investment. Without attracting an increasing share of the readily
available global capital into South Africa, higher levels of growth will be impossible to achieve. Flatlining
growth will result in economic stagnation, rising unemployment and the entrenching of poverty.

Ours is a growth first agenda, meaning that measures to promote inclusion cannot come at the
expense of a healthy economy. To this end, our approach to economic justice is careful not to detract
from economic growth. Where evidence shows that an intervention is acting as a brake on growth, we
would either suspend or remove it from our programme of action.

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CURRENT LEGISLATION VS. ECONOMIC JUSTICE MODEL

Current Legislation Economic Justice: SDG model

Targets the vulnerable and disadvantaged. This is

a much larger group in South Africa, the majority
Targets elites – a small group of people.
of which would have been classified as black under
apartheid.

SDGs identify areas of need and disadvantage. It is

Enables corruption and patronage. more difficult for benefits to accrue to those they
are not intended for.

17 goals which, if achieved, will result in

Narrow criteria, which ignores the many economic, an inclusive and sustainable society. The
environmental, and social contributions the private comprehensiveness of the goals allows private
sector can, and do, make. sector organisations to contribute where they
can make the biggest impact.

Globally recognised model which enjoys the

Parochial local model which makes compliance political support of companies and governments
difficult and costly. around the world. Growing international best
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practice to assist with reporting.
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Huge potential to drive returns as investors,

Deters investment. shareholders, and analysts look for companies with
strong SDG awareness and commitments.
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1. INEQUALITY OF
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OPPORTUNITY
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 1.1 A FAILED, CRONY STATE

South Africa has passed the quarter of a century mark since the end of apartheid and the beginning
of its democracy in 1994. It is true that this is a fraction of the time over which the majority of
South Africans were politically and economically disenfranchised. And yet, twenty-five years is not
insignificant; countries with a sense of urgency, and who were determined to overcome their history, have
demonstrated just what a difference a quarter of a century makes in uniting a country formerly divided
by political and economic disparities.

In 1965 when Singapore became an independent country its prospects did not look good. The
situation just two decades later, however, could not have been more different. In the 1960s Singapore
had not industrialised and had no significant natural endowments, racial tensions were running high, and
its people lived in gang-ridden streets and slums. In the first two decades post-independence Singapore
was experiencing consistently high levels of growth; GDP growth in Singapore did not fall below 5%, and
at its highest point reached 15%. It was not just headline economic indicators which improved, progress
reached the average Singaporean; exemplified most by its housing situation. In the 1960s, 82% of the
Singaporean population lived in squatters and slums. Liu Thai Ker, Singapore’s master planner, stated that
the Housing Development Board was so successful in its rehousing policy that by 1985 Singapore could
claim to have “no homeless, no squatters, no poverty ghettos and no ethnic enclaves”.1

In the 25 years after their transitions, countries such as Singapore, South Korea, and Rwanda were
winning the fight against a deeply unequal past. Comparatively, due to corruption and an incompetent
state, South Africa is losing the fight against economic injustice. Although these countries in the early
stages of their development received criticism for violations of human rights, we believe it is possible
to learn what we can about competent state building from such countries while founding ours on
constitutionalism and liberal democracy.
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Instead of building a state capable of facilitating economic growth and fostering inclusion the failed
crony state has been established: important public institutions have been denuded of their authority
and independence; trillions have been racked up in corruption, wasteful, unauthorised, and irregular
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expenditure; in positions which are essential for service delivery and the effective functioning of the state
unqualified, incompetent, and politically compromised cadres have been appointed.
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1.2 POVERTY AND INEQUALITY

The standard of living, measured by access to basic services, has significantly improved for the
majority of South Africans since 1994.2 However, greater inclusion in basic services has happened against
the backdrop of stagnant, and in some cases, expanding gaps in income.

Poverty is an income measure and reflects the minimum amount of income required to cover basic needs.
The increase in access to basic services, from 1994 to the present day, was due to direct transfers from
the government. This is important because in other countries increases in living standards (i.e. basic
services) reflected that people were becoming richer on an income basis. This is not the case in South
Africa. Many South Africans are still very poor. More than half of South Africa lives in poverty, specifically
55 percent of the country survives on less than R992 per month3, and less than R33 a day.

This is an important feature to bear in mind – that the increase in living standards has been made
possible largely through redistribution (i.e. the social wage) not through rising levels of employment.
In fact, there are now more adults not working than working which means that while there are more

1
BBC News. (2015) Singapore at 50: From swamp to skyscrapers. Sharanjit Leyl. BBC News Online. 25 February. Available at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31626174. 2Bostock, J. (2016) Life in South Africa: Reasons for Hope. South African Institute
for Race Relations, 3World Bank. (2018) Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in South Africa: An Assessment of Drivers, Constraints
and Opportunities. March 2018.

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people than ever before who have access to education, healthcare, electricity, water, and housing; there
are fewer and fewer people able to pay for these utilities and public services.

A rising level of dependency means that taxes retrieved from an already stretched taxpayer base will
have to stretch to cover more and more people. This is unsustainable. Our goal is to bring down the
level of dependency in society, that is the ratio between the economically inactive and the economically
active population. On average, four out of every ten adults are employed in South Africa whereas in more
functional societies that number is six out of ten. The benefit of lower dependency levels means that
we can provide stronger protections for fewer people, instead of weak protections for a rising number.
Stronger protections also mean that people spend less time in need of assistance and quickly get back
on their feet.

In a country with rampant unemployment, the biggest economic differentiator between people will
be between those who earn an income and those who do not. It is therefore understandable that the
most significant contributor to inequality in South Africa is income. 4The difference in wages gained from
employment accounts for much of the inequality; with many earning very little or nothing at all, and a
few who are high income earners. Unsurprisingly, addressing poverty and inequality of opportunity will
fall to a large extent on our ability to bring more South Africans into employment.

In the long term, and across generations, it is not just income which makes a difference, but also
wealth generated. Wealth inequality is worse than income inequality in South Africa. The reason wealth
is important is because it reduces vulnerability and makes socio-economic status stickier. Wealth tends to
create more wealth because financial assets have a higher return than other assets or endowments.

Whether South Africans generate income from owning a business or whether they receive a salary from
an employer, in order to create wealth they will need to dedicate a portion of their income towards some
form of savings and investments. Redistribution alone will not build broad, sustained wealth.

According to the 2017 Momentum/Unisa South African Wealth Index “the real value of South African
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households’ assets is estimated to have increased from R8 246.6 billion in 2016 to R8 730.9 billion in
2017.” 88% of this growth is attributable to financial assets while non-financial assets, including residential
buildings, contributed only 12%. This highlights the importance of accumulating financial assets in
particular. For most people this means investing in products such as retirement funds or retirement
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annuities.

However, very few South Africans save, and those who do save are not investing their money in areas
with the potential for good returns. The proportion of South Africans’ income going towards retirement
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is declining. In 2017, South African metro dwellers invested only 10.8% of their gross income in retirement
products, down from 15% in 2008. In terms of the proportion with a retirement fund or retirement
annuity, this figure reached a peak of 66% in 2014 from 47% in 2009 but has declined to 60% as of July
2017.5

The Savings and Investments Monitor further highlights that among those who save, the majority
of savings tend to be either in banking accounts or through informal savings products. 53% of black
households save using stokvels, 32% use burial societies, and 16% are involved in grocery schemes. These
savings vehicles illustrate that savings tend to be for emergencies. The consequence of which is that
returns on these savings tend to be negligible.

Current estimates are that there are over 820 000 stokvels in the country with a combined membership
of 11.4 million people, handling over R44 billion per annum. Most of the money is paid out monthly to
individuals who spend it on consumables such as food and groceries.

Outside of retirement, few South Africans make investments with the purpose of accumulating wealth.
In the table below (figure 1), we see that average annual returns are higher from financial assets such as
shares (FTSE/JSE All Share Index) than from a non-financial asset like residential property. This is not to
advise that South Africans should be investing in the financial market instead of property but that the
former generates strong returns especially over the long term and that many households could benefit
from gaining or increasing their exposure.

Ibid. 5Old Mutual. (2018) Old Mutual Savings and Investment Report. Old Mutual Savings and Investment Monitor. July 2018.
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Figure 1: Annual average returns by investment choice

Investment Choice 1 Year 3 Years 5 Years 10 Years 15 Years

FTSE/JSE All Share Index 2.63 6.16 12.97 10.50 14.79

RSA Residential Property 5.00 6.23 6.02 4.62 9.65

Sanlam 2017

Low financial literacy, inavailability of work-based schemes, and falling on hard times are all reasons
explaining why the uptake of retirement products is not higher.

It is important to remember that those who are poor are not a static group. For millions of people it is a
struggle to keep afloat and out of poverty. Schotte, Zizzamia and Leibbrandt (2017) propose that, based
on their research, South African society can be divided into five income and class categories: An elite, of
about 4% of the total population; a stable middle class of 20% of the total; a vulnerable middle class of
14%; a transitory poor group, to which about 13% of South Africans belong, and a chronically poor group
of 49%. This is why interventions must focus not only on the chronically poor, but also on those who are
at risk of slipping in and out of poverty.
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South Africa has a well targeted social security system. Cash grants combined with the provision of
basic services establish a floor of minimum living standards for millions of people. However, many tend
to remain trapped in this cycle of dependency because such transfers (grants and basic services) are
insufficient to promote mobility.
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1.3 UNEMPLOYMENT
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South Africa has suffered persistently high levels of unemployment for many years. As early as
1997 South Africa entered the list of the top ten countries globally ranked by unemployment. Still,
unemployment is at the highest level it has been in 16 years, with 29% of South Africans of working age
unemployed. The picture deteriorates further if the expanded definition of unemployment is taken into
account, this takes the unemployment rate to 38.5%.

The expanded definition includes those who are no longer looking for work either because a) they have
lost hope in being able to find employment, b) there are no jobs available for them in the area where
they live, or c) there are no jobs which fit their skills profile. In the absence of a business or a job, millions
of people will lack the income to meet their daily survival needs, let alone have enough to accumulate
wealth for the future.

Long-term unemployment

Long-term unemployment refers to people who have been unemployed for 12 months or more. Over
two-thirds of the unemployed in South Africa (71%) have been unemployed for longer than a year.
Those who experience long-term unemployment tend to earn less once they are employed, are in poorer
health, and have children whose academic performance fares worse than similar workers who avoided
unemployment. Furthermore, communities whose residents have been in long-term unemployment tend
to exhibit higher levels of crime and violence.

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There are two groups to be particularly worried about among the long-term unemployed in South Africa.
The first is young people who struggle to find their first job, and therefore to get a foothold into the job
market. The second group comprises of older persons who have lost their jobs and who struggle to re-
enter the job market.

Many of the long-term unemployed in South Africa last had a job more than five years ago. This
phenomenon is particularly acute among 50-65-year olds, 47.5% of whom have been unemployed for
longer than five years. Economists have suggested that the South African government may need to
accept that certain age groups, above youth age, are not just unemployed but unemployable. We may
not need to accept this if we stopped closing avenues for employment for those who already experience
difficulty in finding employment.

Unemployment and youth

Young people are particularly at risk of not finding work. The unemployment rate among those
between the ages of 15 and 24 years is 41.8% using the standard definition, and 70% on the expanded
definition.6 A report7 into the drivers of youth unemployment reveals that chief among the factors is a)
poor educational outcomes, particularly in basic numeracy and literacy which are critical basic skills for
employers, b) a poorly coordinated further education system, which allows many young people to drop
out and become vulnerable, c) persistent individual and household level barriers such as costs of work
seeking, and limited social capital. This is all against a backdrop of low economic growth which results in
low labour absorption rates.

Unemployment and education

The ability to find employment is affected by one’s education level, with those with higher educational
attainment experiencing significantly lower levels of unemployment (see figure 2). The level of
education reached matters not only for being able to find work, but also the wage received once in
employment. In 2007 those with a degree earned R36/hour, matric R12/hour, and those with up to a
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grade 9 earned only R6/hour.

Improving the quality of basic education at the primary and secondary school level, in particular, with
respect to literacy, numeracy and life skills would leave youth better prepared for the challenges of post-
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school education and the world of work.8

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Figure 2: Unemployed by level of education

Graduates
2% Other
tertiary
1%
Other
1%

Matric
34%
Less than matric
56%

Source: Statistics South Africa.

Quarterly Labour Force Survey

6Statistics South Africa. (2019) Quarterly Labour Force Survey Q3: 2019. Statistical Release P0211. October 2019.
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De Lannoy, A; Graham, L; Patel, L & Leibbrandt, M. (2018) What Drives Youth Unemployment and What Interventions Help? A
Systematic Overview of the Evidence and a Theory of Change. University of Johannesburg. October 2018. 8Gustafsson, M. (2011)
The when and how of leaving school: The policy implications of new evidence on secondary schooling in South Africa. Stellenbosch
Economic Working Papers 09/11. Bureau for Economic Research. Stellenbosch University. September 2011.

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The majority of South Africa’s learners attend what would have been black schools under apartheid.
These schools today continue to exhibit stark differences from formerly white schools. Typical of
such schools is that “teachers generally have less formal education than their former white school
counterparts, while these schools typically also suffer from poor management, little parental participation
and poor assessment. As a consequence, these schools produce poor cognitive outcomes, which are
poorly rewarded in the labour market, resulting in low employment probabilities and low wages for those
who do find jobs in unskilled occupations.”9

There is a critical need not only to improve the quality of education, but to keep young people in
education or training for longer. Unfortunately, many children drop out of school between grades 10-
12. In 2017, a total of 1 052 080 learners were enrolled in grade 10, yet only 409 906 learners eventually
passed matric last year. This means only 38.9% of grade 10 learners actually wrote and passed matric.10

For every cohort, by grade 12 at least 40% of the initial cohort has dropped out. Considering what
we know about the role education plays in unemployment and wages, and in turn the impact of
unemployment and wages on inequality, this figure represents a significant portion of youth who will
join the ranks of the unemployed or low income earners in the future, and thus perpetuating the cycle of
poverty and inequality.

The reasons behind school dropout rates are cumulative, and a study of the predictors of dropouts
reveals that being male, not living with one’s mother, smoking cigarettes in the past month, and having
lower levels of leisure-related intrinsic motivation were all predictors of dropping out.11 The authors also
note that “failing a grade was a significant predictor of dropout until the leisure experience measures
were included”, suggesting that provision of leisure activities can mitigate the loss of motivation which
results from failing. Although drop-out rates are lower for females, the reasons most commonly cited for
leaving school are pregnancy and care responsibilities.

School dropouts would not be a problem if those who left school were being diverted into vocational
training, but this is not happening. Of those who drop out of school, only 1% hold some other non-school
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certificate or diploma issued by, for instance, a TVET college.12 However, the need to divert to a vocational
college before matric should not be so urgent taking into consideration that there are opportunities for
vocational training within the school curriculum. Of the 24 non-language subjects of the Grades 10 to 12
curriculum introduced in 2005, as many as 16 can be considered vocationally oriented.13
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South Africa already spends a great deal on education, increasing resources will not necessarily lead
to improved outcomes. Kenya’s spend on education, per capita, is less than that of South Africa and yet
they achieve better outcomes. There needs to be a focus on putting children first; reducing the influence
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of unions on South Africa’s education system, improving school management, providing effective training
opportunities for teachers, increasing teacher accountability, and ensuring that there are no dropouts.
Failure to do so will continue to result in an education system that is not much better than the Bantu
education system which prevailed under apartheid.14

1.4 THE BREAKDOWN OF THE FAMILY

From the point of view of the family, the migrant labour system created fractures in the family unit
which have had long-term psychosocial consequences, in particular for the care of children. The
industrialisation of the South African economy in the late 19th century due to the discovery of gold and
diamonds led to rapid urbanisation as people moved from rural areas.15

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Moses, E; van der Berg, S. & Rich, K. (2017) A Society Divided: How unequal education quality limits social mobility in South Africa
Synthesis report for the Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development (PSPPD). Research on Economic Policy (RESEP).
Stellenbosch University. February 2017. 10Democratic Alliance (2020) #Matric2019: Real pass rate is 38.9%. Press Statement by MP
Nomsa. 7 January 2020. 11Weybright E.H. et al. (2017) Predicting secondary school dropout among South African adolescents: A
survival analysis approach. South African Journal of Education. Vol. 37 No. 2. May 2017. 13Gustafsson, M. (2011) The when and how
of leaving school: The policy implications of new evidence on secondary schooling in South Africa. Stellenbosch Economic Working
Papers 09/11. Bureau for Economic Research. Stellenbosch University. September 2011. 14Moses, E; van der Berg, S. & Rich, K.
(2017) A Society Divided: How unequal education quality limits social mobility in South Africa Synthesis report for the Programme
to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development (PSPPD). Research on Economic Policy (RESEP). Stellenbosch University. February
2017. 15Sooryamoorthy, R. & Makhoba, M. (2016) The Family in Modern South Africa: Insights from Recent Research. Journal of
Comparative Family Studies. Vol. 47 No. 3. 2016.

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Consequently, as a result of a particular historical legacy and combined with South Africa’s unique
cultural features the family unit in South Africa today takes on various shapes and forms. The 2019
General Household Survey found that one in five children (19.8%) in South Africa do not live with either
one of their biological parents. Close to a third (33.8%) of children lived with both parents, and 43,1%
lived with their mothers meaning 57% lived without their fathers. Sadly, 11.7% of children were orphaned,
losing one or more parents.

The family is important because it is the most basic social unit in society, and, when functional, is
the primary source of emotional, economic, social, and cognitive support for children as well as
adult individuals. However, while many reports and studies indicate the benefits of children growing up
with both parents, the idea of all children growing up in a nuclear family may not always be feasible or
desirable.16 But a stable home environment with adults who are present and engaged in the well-being of
the child is crucial.

The absence of a parent, typically the father, from the home brings not only emotional and social
challenges but often financial ones too. There are many fathers who take care of their children’s needs
even when they are not physically resident with them. But for those who do not, the financial challenges
of raising a child places enormous strain on the primary caregiver. According to the 2011 Census 90% of
people who default are fathers.17

Financial considerations aside, other forms of care as part of fatherhood should be encouraged other
than ensuring that fathers provide financial support.18 For unemployed fathers who cannot afford to
pay maintenance, the inability to provide financial support is often used to restrict access to the child
and thus the ability to perform other parental functions. Non-financial involvement and socioemotional
maintenance should be considered as part of the Maintenance Act whether or not the parent in question
can provide financial care.

The sharing of childcare responsibilities is also critical for the professional and economic prospects of
women. Females continue to be at risk of poverty and experiencing inequality of opportunity due to
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persistent differentials in employment and earnings potential, which in turn are due in large part to the
fact that women continue to disproportionately shoulder childcare responsibilities.

Inequality reports reveal that females find it harder to find a job and earn less than men when they
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do.19 This is in part due to the fact that women tend to shoulder the bulk of childcare responsibilities.
The skewed societal and legal weighting of childcare responsibilities is a gender inequality issue for both
men and women. For women it contributes to economic disparities which begin as early as high school
– the majority of young female learners cite the need to take care of family as the predominant reason
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for dropping out of school.20 Later in life, childcare responsibilities reduce the amount of non-household
work women can take on, as well as their pay when they do formal work. For every Rand a man makes,
a woman makes R0.69 in median hourly wages.21 In South Africa, women only occupy 22.9% of the
positions in senior management and 7% of executive director positions on boards.22

There is no reason to believe that if women were free to choose, that the demographics of every
workplace would mirror those in society. Many women, free to choose, may still choose to prioritise
childcare. The ability of women and families to choose is our paramount concern, not the engineering
society to a predetermined outcome.

However, the legal framework and policy play a big role in shaping how society and the private sector
view the sharing of childcare. An important step towards gender parity was made in the beginning of
2020 when new parental leave policies were enacted. Previously, fathers were afforded three days family
responsibility leave which they could use to take time off when a child is born, compared to women who
were provided with four months maternity leave. As of January 2020, fathers now receive 10 days of
parental leave; while it is a step in the right direction it lags far behind other modern and flexible parental
leave schemes globally.

16
Ratele, K. & Nduna. An Overview of Fatherhood in South Africa. State of South Africa’s Fathers. Sonke Gender Justice and Human
Sciences Research Council. Chapter 3, pg 29-47. 17Statistics South Africa. (2011). Census 2011. Pretoria: Stats SA. 18Grace Khunou.
Fathers and Child Maintenance in South Africa. State of South Africa’s Fathers. Sonke Gender Justice and Human Sciences Research
Council. Pg39-41. 19World Bank. (2018) Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in South Africa: An Assessment of Drivers, Constraints
and Opportunities. March 2018. 20Hartnack, A. (2017) Background document and review of key South African and international
literature on school dropout. DGMT. July 2017. 21NBI (2019) NBI Gender-Pay Gap Dialogue. Transformation and Social Cohesion
Programme. March 2019. 22Ibid.

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The impact of childcare on employment prospects and earning potential is significant. The latest survey
by recruitment service provider, Career Junction, reveals that fewer than two out of ten women receive
full pay from their employers when they go on maternity leave, four out of ten women receive no
compensation at all. It is no wonder that more than a third of respondents felt that “their gender and
parental responsibilities are holding them back from advancing in their careers.”

Furthermore, when female professionals do take time off work to care for children beyond maternity
leave, they rely on annual leave, family responsibility leave, or calling in sick. Only 7% of females said that
their partners step in to assist with a sick child. This seems to echo the finding that while only 31% of
women respondents were single parents, 84% indicated being the primary caregiver.23

Leave, for all legal parents, has the power to contribute significantly to the recognition and
redistribution of care work and to transform deeply rooted inequalities between men and women.
These policies can be an effective mechanism for changing the gendered dynamics of caregiving at
home, while promoting women’s equal pay and advancement in the workforce. Which in turn, may relieve
men of the pressure of necessarily having to be the financial provider.

1.5 HEALTH INEQUALITY

As with education, South Africa has two types of healthcare. Excellent, indeed world-class, private
healthcare but poor, inadequate and sometimes even dangerous public healthcare. Tragedies like Life
Esidimeni, and the fact that in three of our provinces the health departments have had to be put under
administration in recent years all point to just how broken public healthcare is in South Africa.
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Public healthcare has become a microcosm of South Africa’s legacy of insiders and outsiders. The deep
inequalities which exist in our country play themselves out painfully in the health system.

The majority of South Africans make use of public health facilities which are overly burdened; with
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crumbling infrastructure; often with critical medication stock-outs, long waiting times in queues and
public healthcare professionals who are evidently over-stretched. South Africa has a ratio of one clinic
to 16 971 people, as opposed to the guideline of 1:10 000. South Africa also has a ratio of 0.7 doctors
to every 100 000 people, well below the average of OECD or BRICS nations. On the other hand, 16% of
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South Africans rely on the private health system; while in many instances it provides a reliable and higher
standard of care, it often does so at increasingly high rates which lock out more people from medical
schemes and lends itself to exploitative practices.

South Africa is one of the countries which spends the most on healthcare, with an accumulative budget
of over R222 billion across all departments and its entities. A department with a budget this large should
– at the very least – provide an adequate level of care. However, we know this not to be true.

The 2018 General Household Survey measured satisfaction with healthcare services at both public
and private institutions disaggregated down to provincial level. Though the provincial profile of
the population differs across socio-economic factors, there is distinct unity in terms of perception of
service quality across all provinces. Households which used private healthcare providers reported more
satisfaction with the service provided than households who made use of public health care. Satisfaction
with services amongst users of private healthcare was extremely high with 92.6% of users indicating that
they were very satisfied with the services received. In contrast only 53.8% of users of public healthcare
providers indicated that they were very satisfied with the services received. Much of the dissatisfaction
with the public health sector can be attributed to the state of public facilities in South Africa and the
challenges faced by healthcare workers to provide quality care under extremely bad conditions.

Socio-economic inequalities exacerbate health inequalities; as poor communities often face challenges
to their health associated with their living and working conditions which include unsafe, unsanitary, and
overcrowded living spaces, and poor food security. In turn, ill health reinforces these inequalities by
diminishing the productive capacity of individuals which results in less time spent at work or looking for
work.

TimesLive (2019) Many women get no maternity leave pay at all, while very few get full pay. Sunday Times South Africa. 6 August
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2019.

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We must ensure that Section 27 of the Constitution is realised and that each and every South African can
confidently access reliable and excellent health services.

1.6 MALNUTRITION AND STUNTING

Many children do not receive the adequate support they need in order to grow into healthy and fully
productive adults capable of living their lives to the full. Early childhood development encompasses the
cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development of the child from pregnancy to the age of three.
The nutrition, care, and stimulation provided during this period is critical for laying the foundations of
each child’s future.

Malnutrition reflects poverty and manifests itself in different ways; stunting – low height for age,
wasting – low weight for height, underweight – low weight for age. However, stunting i.e. low height for
age, is of particular concern as there is growing evidence of the connections between slow growth in
height in early life and impaired health, educational, and economic performance later in life.24 Failure to
reach standard height is caused by inadequate diet and frequent infections.

The Maternal and Child Undernutrition Study Group which included South Africa in its group of countries
under study found that height-for-age at two years old was the best predictor of human capital and
that undernutrition is associated with lower human capital. The study concludes that damage suffered
in the early developmental stages leads to permanent impairment.25 Another finding of the study is that
undernutrition can affect cognitive development by causing direct structural damage to the brain and by
impairing infant motor development and exploratory behaviour.
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At least one in four children (27.4%) in South Africa are stunted.26 A great deal more attention and policy
focus need to be placed on this figure. It tells us, perhaps more than any other figure, about the future
prospects of the country and the challenge facing the efficacy of later interventions.
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Being stunted at 24 months was associated with a 16% increased risk of failing at least one grade in
school after controlling for other variables such as sex, socio-economic status and maternal schooling.

There is a strong economic case for investing in childhood nutrition. South Africa has introduced a
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multitude of policies aimed at reducing child malnutrition, including: food fortification, social grants,
school feeding schemes, vitamin A campaigns, and exclusive breastfeeding. Undernutrition has reduced
over the past two decades but is still high for a middle-income country.27

1.7 SPATIAL INEQUALITY

Poverty and inequality are strongly tied to spatial dynamics which in significant ways continue to
mirror apartheid geography. Rural areas have the highest poverty concentration in South Africa, with
59.7% of the poor living in rural areas.28 Notably, the poorest municipalities today are still in the former
apartheid homelands of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

In contrast, the 30 municipalities with the lowest household poverty rates are located in Gauteng and the
Western Cape. Data from poverty map calculations between 1996 and 2011 reveal important insights into
the persistence of poverty. A strong correlation is found between municipality-level poverty rates in 1996
and 2011: the higher the poverty rate a municipality had in 1996, the more likely it was to also have higher
poverty rate in 2011. This suggests spatial patterns of poverty have not changed much over time.

24
Dewey, K.G & Begum, K. (2011) Long-term consequences of stunting in early life. Maternal and Child Nutrition. Department of
Nutrition and Program in International and Community Nutrition, University of California. 25Victora, C.G. et al. (2008) Maternal and
child undernutrition: consequences for adult health and human capita. The Lancet. Vol. 371. Series: Maternal and Child Undernutrition
2. 26 January, 2008. 26Statistics South Africa (2018) Education Series Volume IV: Early Childhood Development in South Africa, 2016.
27
Sewpaul. R. (2018) Child malnutrition in South Africa: Results from the South African National Health and Nutrition Examination
Survey (SANHANES). HSRC BRICS Seminar Series. Human Sciences Research Council. 16 July 2018. 28World Bank. (2018)
Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in South Africa: An Assessment of Drivers, Constraints and Opportunities. March 2018.

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The spatial separation of the country and the inaccessibility of jobs to much of the working age
population in rural and remote areas has resulted in many discouraged work-seekers and non-seekers.
People in urban areas have better prospects of getting a job and a higher probability of getting a
formal job. Location has implications on the travel costs which tend to be a burden for getting jobs.
The unemployed, and especially the youth, tend to lack resources required for a job search and lack the
ability to relocate when jobs are located far away. In some cases, underdeveloped transport, high cost of
commuting and crime makes job searching more difficult and raises associated expenses and reservation
wages.

The 2013 National Travel Survey indicates that urban and metropolitan households tended to wait
longer for transport than had been the case in 2003, when the last survey was performed, and their
journeys to work and school also took somewhat more time.

Land reform

Land reform refers broadly to three goals: land redistribution, land restitution, and secure tenure for
the beneficiaries.

• Redistribution is concerned with the equitable distribution of land to address a past of dispossession
where certain land (typically at the heart of economic activity) was reserved for a minority of the
population.
• Restitution is reserved for those who can prove that they were dispossessed of land after 1913, and
the process to return that land and/or provide compensation for it.
• Security of tenure covers the nature of land rights that people have over the land they live/work on.

The High Level Panel report provides a sound overview of the challenges which have beleaguered
the land reform agenda. Since 1994, a substantial body of new laws has emerged from all levels of
government to fulfil the mandate presented by the Constitution. The High Level Panel on the Assessment
of Key Legislation and the Acceleration of Fundamental Change (HLP) was called upon by the Speaker’s
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Forum to assess this legislative output. One of the important areas covered by the HLP is land reform.
These challenges are summarized as follows:
• Many restitution claimants who filed claims prior to 1998 have still not received land due to long
delays and constantly changing qualification requirements, among other challenges.
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• Unhelpful, rude officials.

• Lack of training and capacity.
• Corruption – land going to people other than the rightful beneficiaries.
• Vulnerability to dispossession due to officials and traditional leaders who do not give proper
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recognition to land rights.

• Unlawful evictions of farmworkers.
• Beneficiaries of land through redistribution or restitution do not become owners, but instead the land
becomes the property of the state and beneficiaries have to obtain leases.
• Low levels of political will.
• Poor policy coherence.
• Lack of funding – in the past less than 0.1% of the national budget has been set aside for land reform.

What comes through clearly is that compensation for sellers, or current owners of land, is not a
stumbling block to land reform. Indeed, it is vital that any loss of property is fairly compensated in order
not to undermine private property rights. The reason to engage in land reform in the first instance is to
provide beneficiaries with a meaningful right/entitlement. If property rights are eroded in the process of
implementing reform than beneficiaries are given an asset of significantly diminished value. We oppose
expropriation without compensation.

1.8 DISCRIMINATION

In addition to the drivers of inequality typically identified by studies (nutrition, education, savings, spatial
architecture, sharing of childcare responsibilities etc.) racial discrimination can also reduce access to
opportunity, particular in the workplace where it may affect who gets hired or promoted. In response
countries, including South Africa, have developed anti-discrimination and affirmative action policies.

The origins of the idea of Affirmative Action (AA) lies in 1960s legislation from the United States.
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The original conception of AA emphasized the idea that discrimination was not only impermissible, but
employers had to take positive steps to ensure that discrimination did not occur and that everyone was
afforded an equal footing to compete. Over time there have developed divergent theories on whether
positive AA measures should foster equality of opportunity or whether they should result in equality of
outcome. The DA unequivocally supports Affirmative Action to promote equality of opportunity. This
principle of addressing the underlying causes of inequality, as opposed to papering over the symptoms,
underpins all our proposed interventions.

Research as early as 2004 suggested that the effect of “pure discrimination” in explaining the wage
and employment gap between white and black South Africans had been replaced by differential
returns to education. The authors conclude that “it does seem to suggest that the most efficient way
of narrowing the wage gap in the long-run is to improve the quality of education offered at “historically
Black” schools.”29

Workplaces and other environments can be prone to different kinds of discrimination: discrimination
on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, sexual preference, nationality, religion, disability, income
status etc. It is not a sustainable strategy to tackle discrimination by imposing demographic targets or
quotas for every demographic group.

Tackling discrimination should be the responsibility of the employer and every employee of an
organisation. Being a member of a racial, or other, group does not ensure that that particular individual
is best able to propose interventions or prevent discrimination or exploitation of that group. ‘Black’
ownership of the mutual bank, VBS, did little to ensure that poor ‘black’ South Africans were not
exploited. Studies have also revealed the propensity of female executives to act as gatekeepers against
the advancement of other female employees. The high costs of engineering demographic representativity
might be justified if it prevented discrimination but it does not.
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Rulof Burger and Rachel Jafta. Returns to Race: Labour Market Discrimination in Post Apartheid South Africa. Accessed at https://
29

www.researchgate.net/profile/Rulof_Burger/publication/24134156_Returns_to_Race_Labour_Market_Discrimination_in_Post-
Apartheid_South_Africa/links/0deec529ec580a37e9000000.pdf
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2. EQUALITY OF
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OPPORTUNITY
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How we can beat the past and build the future

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 2.1 EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY

What we know is that there are high returns, in terms of opportunity, to financial assets, education,
location, early childhood nutrition, sharing of childcare etc. Apartheid meant that there was a skewed
pattern of these initial endowments – in other words South Africans did not have an equal starting point
with respect to these factors, with the majority of South Africans provided with little endowments and a
minority with higher initial endowments.

In our interventions we want to make sure that we focus on the initial endowments which set people
up for a better life. By focusing on eradicating inequality of opportunity at various stages of life we will
build a ladder of opportunity for every South African, from cradle to retirement.

Planning
for
retirement
Growing
a business

Starting
a family
Labour
market
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entry

Schooling

Eary
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childhood
development
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Equality of opportunity

People can never be entirely equal, our biological endowments are different and the environment we
are born into, and live in, which includes our friends, family, community and many other environmental
factors ensures that we remain unique. But there are drivers of inequality and success which are
influenced by public policy which can be designed to give as many people as possible a fair shot of living
the life they wish.

Fair equality of opportunity in policy does not assume that everybody already has a fair chance in life,
it is a call to action. It says that where we are in government, we must put in place positive measures to
enhance equality of opportunity. We can, and should, provide everyone with a solid foundation on which
to use their own talents and innate abilities to take themselves as far as they wish to go.

Unfortunately, the initial endowments highlighted which could afford people a more equal playing
field have not been the focus of policy in South Africa. Policies have instead placed primary focus and
resources at the elite level; such as the ownership and management profiles of companies, not equality of
opportunity for the many.

The common justification for using demographic quotas/targets is that our socio-economic system is
still broken. It is argued that many people receive vastly different educational, extracurricular, health, and
other opportunities. However, instead of plastering over a broken system by selecting the numbers we
would have liked to see if the system were not broken, we are committed to fixing the system.

In the 25 years since democracy, not enough has been done to correct the injustices of the past which
keep the playing field grossly unequal. We are committed to levelling the playing field so that every

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citizen and resident has a fair start. In practical terms this means a focus on improving standards in basic
education, ensuring that every child has adequate nutrition and is able to meet early developmental
milestones, an emphasis on making our communities safer and with increased opportunities for
extracurricular development so that youth do not fall prey to gangsterism and other anti-social behavior,
policies to support the sharing of childcare responsibilities, and increasing financial literacy among other
interventions. All these interventions will do more to affirm and empower the vast majority of South
Africans than present elite based approaches.

Trickle down redress

Ultimately, redress at the top has failed as a strategy to drive redress at the lowest rungs of the
economy. BEE when introduced was considered “a necessary government intervention to address
the systematic exclusion of the majority of South Africans from full participation in the economy”. It
has failed at achieving broad economic inclusion. The change from BEE to BBBEE did not result in
a meaningful shift from elitist interventions to broad-based interventions. Focus on ownership and
management control of large companies has received greater policy attention than the contributions the
private sector can make to broader society. Similarly, changing the demographics of senior executive
leaders has been met with more political urgency than improving education which would allow more
people to access high-skilled jobs.

2.2 PROMOTING EQUAL OPPORTUNITY THROUGH SDGs

Introduction to the SDGs

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South Africa’s key drivers of inequality of opportunity are strongly aligned to the 17 global focus areas
which form the basis of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These goals were the product
of broad stakeholder involvement and buy-in; bringing together the private sector, civil society, and
government. As a result, there is strong global awareness, and action towards their achievement.
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Unlike the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the GA in 2000, the private sector, by
invitation of the Secretary General, played a role in conceptualising and shaping the outcome document
of the SDGs, making the SDGs both universal and inclusive of governments, civil society and corporate
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citizens across the globe.30

Where these goals are unmet, they drive inequality of opportunity and hamper sustainable
development. The primary approach to addressing a legacy of inequality of opportunity, and achieving
economic justice, should therefore be grounded in the SDGs.

Considering that South Africa’s own redress approaches have been seen as elitist (benefit a few and
not the majority), parochial (with low levels of support from our biggest international trade partners),
and unproductive (net loss for many businesses), the SDGs present an exciting opportunity to tackle
inequality of opportunity in a manner which is broad based, global, and has the ability to drive returns.

At present companies which contribute to eradicating childhood malnutrition, improving teacher quality
and helping learners stay in school, or provide extensive parental benefits to employees, improve urban
mobility, build mixed housing, or improve financial inclusion are either not recognised entirely or, where
they do count, these contributions add up to only 5% of the BEE scorecard as part of the socio-economic
development criterion.

Efforts to achieve equal opportunity across society will require collaboration with the private sector.
Any business that pursues its ends at the expense of the society in which it operates will find its success
to be illusory and ultimately temporary. At the same time, a healthy society needs successful companies.
Few social programmes can rival the business sector when it comes to creating the jobs, wealth, and
innovation that improves standards of living and social conditions over time. If governments, NGOs, and
other participants in civil society weaken the ability of business to operate productively then we risk
corporate and regional competitiveness fading, wages stagnating, jobs disappearing, and extinguishing
the wealth that pays taxes and supports non-profit contributions.

United Nations Global Compact (2019) Private Sector Contribution to South Africa’s 2019 Voluntary National Review on
30

Sustainable Development Goals. Global Compact Network South Africa. July 2019.

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We require a model of addressing the injustices of the past which does not hamper business
productivity. Because of the inclusive nature in which the SDGs were developed, there is a high level of
political and private sector buy-in. In South Africa, of the companies that have assessed the SDGs, 83%
go on to adopt them in their business strategies. This is happening voluntarily.31

Attitudes and social commitment towards policies are of paramount importance to policy success.
In 2016, the EU Chamber of Commerce in South Africa indicated BEE legislation as its top legislative
impediment, and top three challenge overall to doing business in South Africa.32 Investor sentiment
towards present policy is not at odds with public sentiment; when South Africans were surveyed and
asked whether BEE had helped their community, 65.1% of respondents said no.33 The South African
Reconciliation Barometer (SARB), a survey by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, shows that
although there has been a gradual increase in support of racial categories for transformation purposes,
from 40.1% in 2007 to 48.5% in 2013. However, SARB data has never indicated that a majority of South
Africans are in favour of the continued use of race as a measure of transformation.34

Many companies are already significant contributors to the SDGs, but these efforts are not recognised.
In some cases, the private sector has stepped in to provide basic services and infrastructure where
municipalities have struggled to deliver on their own. Alignment with the SDGs allows for these
contributions to be recognised.

Attainment of the SDGs represents the best opportunity to achieve true transformation and economic
inclusion for the majority of South Africans. In particular, government’s procurement spend presents
an enormous opportunity for the public sector to prioritise doing business with companies that make a
positive contribution to driving the 2030 Agenda.

Public procurement accounts for 22% of South Africa’s GDP.35 It is thus a potentially powerful lever to
incentivise change across and down value chains of the whole economy. Just like the private sector,
government has the ability to make a conscious decision about the kind of business it wishes to do
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business with. Specifically, public procurement has a critical role to play in promoting the inclusive and
sustainable growth championed by the SDGs. Unfortunately, procurement policy and SDGs in South
Africa are currently not aligned.
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Sustainable procurement policy is the most comprehensive approach because it considers all the three
dimensions – economic, social and environmental – necessary for sustainable development.36 Public
procurement can offer the right market incentives for sustainable development to occur, although it is
best when corporates authentically integrate sustainability into their strategies.
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South Africa ranks 113th out of 162 countries, placing us in the bottom third of countries by SDG
ranking.37 The overwhelming beneficiary of improvement in SDGs would be ‘black’ South Africans since
they are most affected by the various deprivations which the SDGs track.

SDG reporting and procurement model

An SDG score/index can easily replace the current scorecard. The substantive difference between this
and current policy in South Africa is that where the present scorecard is narrow and impacts the lives
of a few, an SDG score/index would be comprehensive and reach the many, where the current model is
parochial the new model is global, and where the current approach deters investment, a turn to social
impact would drive investment.

United Nations Global Compact. (2017) Business Reporting on The SDGs: An Analysis of the Goals and Targets. Global
31

Reporting Initiative and United Nations. 32EU Chamber of Commerce South Africa (2016). Business Climate Survey. Accessed
at: http://euchamber.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Business-Climate-Survey-2016-final-01.02.2017.pdf 33https://irr.org.
za/reports/atLiberty/files/eed-is-for-real-empowerment-whereas-bee-has-failed 34Potgieter, E & Moosa, M. (2018) More than a
space for interracial contact: Exploring the importance of the workplace for social cohesion and reconciliation in South Africa.
Reconciliation and Development Report 1. 35Bolton, P. (2016) Public procurement as a tool to drive innovation in South Africa. PER:
Potchefstroomse Elektroniese Regsblad. Vol. 19, No. 1. Stellenbosch University. 36De Donno, B; Ventura, L; & De Maio, A. (2019) What
does public procurement have to do with sustainability? OECD: Development Matters. 30 April 2019. 37Sachs, J., Schmidt-Traub, G.,
Kroll, C., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G. (2019): Sustainable Development Report 2019. New York: Bertelsmann Stiftung and Sustainable
Development Solutions Network (SDSN).

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Broad-based and comprehensive

The underlying criteria for assessment would shift from placing emphasis on narrow criteria, towards
addressing the drivers of poverty and inequality, in large part through the monitoring of SDGs and
SDG targets. Through corporate reporting, companies have the flexibility to prioritise SDGs which they
have the most impact on via their business model and value chain, thus allowing companies and investors
the flexibility to focus on those SDGs most relevant to their operating environment. This is not about
‘cherry picking’ SDGs which are easiest for the business to contribute towards, some of the SDGs relevant
to a business may be the most difficult for a business. For example, SDG 6 and 15, related to water use
and life on land respectively, may be most difficult for mining companies, yet highly relevant considering
their impact on this goal.

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Aiming for the achievement of the SDGs is about more than just expanding the current scorecard,
it is a fundamental difference in approach. Our ability to increase economic growth and economic
opportunities is constrained by the quality of the labour force, natural resources, technology and other
factors – in other words our ability to increase labour productivity and capital productivity. There are
numerous productivity enhancing contributions which would be recognised using an SDG model that
would not be recognised using the current scorecard, because of its emphasis on how to divide the
economy, as opposed to how to grow it inclusively.

This approach effectively turns the economic redress model on its head; instead of expecting strategies
such as ownership, management, and diversifying the supplier base to trickle down to broader socio-
economic improvements, we rely on socio-economic investments to be the catalyst to increase skills,
Small, Medium and Micro-sized Enterprises (SMMEs) and the growth of successful businesses. The
strategies are not mutually exclusive, but the point of emphasis is crucial.

We believe that greater economic inclusion is locked up in our failure to recognise the many different
ways which business can enhance equality of opportunity.

Global

Over 85% of the largest 500 global corporations now disclose non-financial information on the United
Nations Sustainable Development Goals as part of their legally binding annual financial report. Thus,
it seems fair to conclude that the SDGs will become the globally accepted strategic roadmap by listed
companies.38

SCR500 SDG Commitment Report Empowering Investors on Both Profit and Impact.
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Furthermore, South Africa would be in a position to assess and rank its companies in a manner which is
aligned to global standards and best practice. The United Nations General Assembly backed the World
Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) to develop free, publicly available benchmarks which will rank companies
on their contributions to realising the SDGs. The WBA will develop transformative benchmarks that will
track and compare companies’ performance on the SDGs. The WBA states that these benchmarks are
“designed to be used by a variety of stakeholders, including investors, financial institutions, governments,
civil society and the companies themselves.” In government, we would ensure that we provide input into
the development of these benchmarks, and that we adjust and apply the benchmarks to local companies,
and foreign companies operating in South Africa. It would be necessary to provide for appropriate
exemptions for small and medium-sized business.

There is scope within the SDG model to include sector-specific blueprints and priorities. Examples at
the global level include the Forest Sector SDG Roadmap and the Chemical Sector SDG Roadmap. These
provide a sector framework for the most impactful contributions which companies within these sectors
can make in order to further the realisation of the SDGs.

Drive returns

The UNGSII SCR500 is a curated analysis of the world’s top 500 companies that analyses and ranks
their commitments to the SDGs. Companies receive a Green (best), Yellow (on the right track) or Red
(need improvement) ranking based on their annual reports. The financial and Environmental, Social
and Governance (ESG) reporting expertise exists in South Africa to enable the analysis and ranking
of companies by their SDG commitments. The strong performance of indices which track companies
by their ESG disclosures indicates that there is also a strong appetite among shareholders to invest in
profitable businesses which make a positive social impact (see figure 3).

Figure 3
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RATE OF RETURN

18,03
13,71
11,97
8,43

INDEX

Identification of beneficiaries

Interventions which help to bring us closer to achieving the SDGs should be focused on those who face
vulnerability in a particular area. Thus, a clear need should be established based on means. A means
or disadvantage-based approach allows the identification of beneficiaries to be based on factors
(non-exhaustive) such as income status, geographic location, school quintile, net assets, number of
dependents, or access to basic services. An educational intervention may wish to identify beneficiaries
according to school quintile, or a housing scheme may identify beneficiaries according to income status
and geographic location – whatever the intervention, it is possible to identify beneficiaries according to
the actual disadvantage suffered.

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 2.3 GOVERNMENT SDG PRIORITIES

In section 1, we explored the key drivers of inequality of opportunity in South Africa. The weight of the
burden to address economic exclusion via public policy falls on government. In this regard, what follows
are brief proposals showing how in government we can address each inequality driver and provide
alignment to the SDGs. In many cases stand-alone policies would be required for each area.

2.3.1 Building a capable state

SDG target: Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels.

These are the top-level interventions we believe are necessary for the government to become less
bloated and to function as a lean delivery organisation:
• Reduce the number of ministries (see our 15 ministries plan).
• Establish an independent corruption fighting body with investigative and prosecutorial arms, each
reporting to SAPS and the NPA respectively. The unit as a whole should be answerable to parliament.
• Require the appointment and removal of the NDPP to happen via a resolution of Parliament.
• Implement lifestyle audits for all politicians and government officials above a certain level, or
suspected of fraud and/or corruption, as well as doing annual lifestyle audits for government officials
selected randomly, by a similar process as that through which SARS identifies taxpayers for auditing.

However, building a capable state is about more than technocratic rules, systems, and processes – it is
fundamentally also about the culture of the government and the society which usually are a reflection of
each other. In order to get culture right, we believe it begins with us. The values and principles which will
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guide our organisational culture, and thus the culture of government where we govern are as follows:

• Freedom
• Opportunity
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• Openness
• Fairness
• Market economy
• Constitutionalism and the rule of law
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• Accountability
• Diversity
• Nonracialism
• Redress
• Separation of party and state
• Separation of powers
• Federalism
• Evidence-based decision making
• Compassion
• Integrity
• Resilience
• Excellence

Please refer to our values and principles framework for a detailed analysis of these positions.

2.3.2 Unemployment
SDG target: Adopt policies, especially fiscal, wage and social protection policies, and progressively
achieve greater equality. By 2020, substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment,
education or training.

Addressing unemployment requires interventions on the demand side and supply side of human
capital. Numerous interventions in this paper address the supply side; in other words how we would
support the education, health, mobility, family, and financial wellbeing of the people who make up the
South African labour force. These interventions provide people with the capability to both create jobs
and to fill the job vacancies which arise in a thriving and growing economy.

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The South African economy is not growing at a pace which is conducive to job creation. Our efforts
to boost investor confidence and to grow the economy must be detailed in the appropriate policy
documents. However, we stress that ours is a growth first inclusion agenda; meaning that we recognise
that our efforts to address socio-economic exclusions depend on, and will be accelerated by, a growing
economy.

Our key growth interventions are:

• Repeal the Protection of Investment Act.
• Provide certainty that property will be protected, and that expropriation will be compensated and
follow due process.
• Relax exchange controls.
• Introduce a legislative fiscal rule that will help stabilise national debt by setting legislative limits on
how much the government can borrow each year.
• Freeze the wages of the 33.7% of public servants not covered by the Occupation Specific
Dispensation (OSD) (including the likes of highly paid head office managers and supervisors). This
would protect the real front-line delivery staff, and would also yield R138,6 billion.
• Privatise SAA and end Eskom’s monopoly.
• Provide an Emergency Solar Rebate (ESR) of up to R75 000 to incentivise and assist individuals to
generate electricity at their private residences for their own consumption. This will alleviate pressure
from the grid, helping to lower the load- shedding burden for other families, and importantly for
businesses.
• Overhaul the current visa regime for skilled workers to attract investment and to ensure that South
Africa imports “skills”.
• Small businesses under R30 million turnover per annum will be exempted from all labour and BEE
legislation barring the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.
• Amend Section 32 of the Labour Relations Act to reflect membership of Sector Bargaining Councils
based on company representation and not number of employees. This will improve the bargaining
capability and voice of small business owners.
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• Provide legal exemptions to small and new firms from collective bargaining agreements to which they
are not party.
• Expand the Employment Tax Incentive to absorb more workers over a longer period.
• Enforce government payment to suppliers with annual turnover below R50 million within 21 days,
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down from the current 30 days.

• Enable Treasury to become the ultimate debt factoring entity buying invoices/providing guarantees
for all small businesses with a turn-over below R30 million per annum.
• Scrap the Mining Charter in totality.
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• Rewrite the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act (the MPRDA) so that it delivers
certainty to investors and reduces the scope for decisions to be taken by officials and politicians.
• Introduce a job-seekers’ exemption certificate (detailed below).

A Job Seekers’ Exemption Certificate (JSEC) is a document giving a person the right to take a job at a
wage they find acceptable. Other entitlements may also be waived as long as they do not form part of
the basic conditions of employment.

The following conditions apply to the JSEC:

• You have to have been unemployed for an uninterrupted period of 12 months or more i.e. qualify as
being part of the long-term unemployed.
• The JSEC is valid for only two years. (The period of validity is still being debated, there are advocates
of a shorter and longer period).

Internationally, there is precedent for exempting certain categories of workers from minimum
wage provisions. Categories for exemption or differentiation include by age, job classification, formal
qualification, period of unemployment etc. One of our case studies is Germany. A minimum wage law
came into effect in Germany in 2015. One of the categories exempt from the minimum wage law are
persons unemployed for 12 months or longer.

In Germany long-term unemployed persons receive a certificate about the duration of their
unemployment from the competent employment agency or job centre. Once an individual takes up
employment with more than 15 working hours per week their unemployment ends, and they lose their
status as a long-term unemployed person.

Employers are able to apply for exemption from minimum wages. As employment is a two-sided
relationship, if employers are able to motivate for their exemption then the same right must be extended
to job-seekers.
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 2.3.3 Education: Increasing time spent in education and teacher quality
SDG targets: By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality
primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes. By 2030,
substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including
technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship.

Increasing time spent in education

We want every child to spend at least 12 years in education, and for them to spend as many hours
as possible within those years at school and engaged in learning. In order to achieve this, we are
committed to eradicating school dropouts, and to ensuring that teachers and learners spend as much
time as possible in school engaged in teaching and learning.

School dropouts are due to a complex interaction of both extrinsic factors (external pressures, including
school and family circumstances, which cause learners to grow discouraged and give up on school) and
intrinsic factors (individual disposition or personal choices that cause a learner to drop out of school).
This makes addressing school dropouts challenging and unlikely to be resolved by a single solution.
Rather it will require a comprehensive programme of interventions.

Facing a similar challenge of early school-leavers, the EU identified the necessary intervention as
being a ‘whole school approach’. The whole school approach recognizes the variety of stakeholders
in the school system, and that each one represents a touch point for students and influences the
educational experience. This includes school governing bodies, teachers, parents and/or families. It
is important that early signals of disengagement, including school absenteeism and inappropriate
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behaviour, are detected rapidly and that quick responses are put in place. In order to reduce school
dropouts we would focus on the following interventions:
• Put in place early detection mechanisms to identify learners who may be at risk, since the decision to
finally dropout is due to an accumulation of factors over time.
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• Ensure that teachers identify learners who intend to leave school after grade 9 and assist them to
enrol in vocational training. The Department of Basic Education should track and seek to ensure that
there is a 100% diversion rate from basic education to vocational training.
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A report by Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) has found that South African teachers
only spend 66% of classroom time teaching, compared to the international average of 78%.39 It is no use
if we manage to keep learners in school but if a big chunk of that time is lost to activities that do not
advance learning. In this regard important interventions we would seek to make include:
• Subsidising the provision of menstrual cups for girls. These have several benefits over sanitary pads:
they are reusable and thus more cost effective over time, they are also eco-friendly which helps to
reduce waste.
• Preventing teacher strikes during school hours.
• Replicating the Western Cape’s strategy countrywide which seeks to keep learners safe before,
during, and after school. If children do not view going to school as safe then it is not an environment
which they will seek to return to.40

Addressing teacher quality

We know that it is not just time spent within the education system that matters but the quality of the
education received. Research indicates that learners from poor-quality schools earn less than those who
have attended high-quality schools, even when one controls for time spent in education.

Institutional incentives for teacher performance are in effect absent in South African public schools,
with the result that career progression and financial rewards for teachers are largely delinked from
performance. The promotion and salary earned by teaching staff is instead largely determined by
seniority and educational qualifications. There is also a cycle of negative reinforcement where young
teachers who are themselves products of dysfunctional schools go back to teach in those same schools.
Recent research revealed that 79% of South African grade 6 mathematics teachers have content
knowledge levels below the level at which they are teaching.41

TALIS 2018. South Africa Country Note. 40Moses, E., Van der Berg, S., & Rich, K. (2017) A Society Divided: How Unequal Education
39

Quality Limits Social Mobility In South Africa. Research on Socio-Economic Policy (RESEP). Stellenbosch University.

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 Venkat, H., & Spaull, N. (2015). What do we know about primary teachers’ mathematical content knowledge in South Africa? An
41

analysis of SACMEQ 2007. International Journal of Educational Development, (41), 121-130.

Because the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers10, teacher quality
must be the first priority of our education system. The following interventions should be made to boost
teacher quality:

• Promote careers in education through a “become a teacher campaign” focused on the top cohort of
learners. Teaching is often not a profession that high achievers are encouraged to pursue.
• Professionalise the teaching profession by ensuring that competency testing and evaluation of
professional teaching standards is accompanied by requisite training and facilities for teachers.
Teachers work within a societal contest of inequality, violence, and poor nutrition which all impact
on the ability to teach. Professionalising the teaching profession should be just as much about
supporting teachers as it is about holding them accountable.
• Actively look beyond the borders of South Africa to attract foreign skills to our educational system
and collaborate with the Department of Home Affairs to streamline applications for work permits
from teachers with identified scarce skills.
• Enable excellent teachers to advance their careers in the classroom. Currently, in order to qualify
for promotion and salary progression, teachers are required to go into school (and eventually
departmental) management. It is vital to enable outstanding teachers, particularly in subjects where
there is a teacher shortage, to progress up the career and remuneration ladder without having to
abandon teaching.
• Professionalise classrooms through the use of technology. Important advancements in technology
are available to aid schools in their administration, as well as teaching and learning functions.
Introducing classrooms to modern teaching techniques and tools is essential to fast track the quality
of education provided to learners. Where these investments are made, we would make sure that
teachers are given the necessary training to use them and that equipment is kept safe from theft and
vandalism.
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2.3.4 Wealth inequality
SDG target: Adopt policies, especially fiscal, wage and social protection policies, and
progressively achieve greater equality
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Addressing wealth inequality, like many other interventions, requires a healthy growing economy. We
support a progressive taxation system which ensures that wealth accumulation is taxed fairly in order to
support measures which assist the broader population. However, we want to primarily reduce the wealth
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gap by moving people up the wealth ladder, not being satisfied to pull those who have accumulated
wealth constantly downwards. As a result, the interventions we propose are geared towards increasing
asset ownership. In order to increase asset ownership, we would take the following steps:
• Address financial literacy and awareness.

Some households do not save because incomes are too low and others do not save due to bad
spending habits and lack of financial literacy. Broader economic interventions are essential to grow
household incomes, but South Africans save less than many other countries at every income bracket.
Research into the spending patterns of low-income households from around the world show that even
very poor individuals have some room to save.42 Meaning that there is a role for improved financial
literacy and awareness beyond increasing disposable income.

One important intervention would be to develop a national strategy for financial literacy, learning from
the model adopted in New Zealand which brings in civil society and private sector players, as well as
integrating financial literacy into the secondary and tertiary education curriculums.

Financial literacy especially for those who are already saving, such as in stokvels, may help to divert
savings to investment vehicles which will generate higher returns for members.

Even financially literate adults often do not make financially sound decisions. The gap between what
people know and what they do needs to be addressed through behavioral interventions. Behavioural
nudges, auto-escalation, and higher default savings can also increase awareness and address
informational gaps.

42
Banerjee, A. V., & Duflo, E. (2007). The economic lives of the poor. Journal of economic perspectives, 21(1), 141-168.

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Behavioural nudges: periodic email, app-based, or employer communication for employees that inform
whether current savings are sufficient to maintain the current standard of living after retirement, and
which provide quick actionable steps to remedy the situation may be inexpensive yet effective means to
encourage savings. Behavioural studies provide indication that these nudges can be more successful than
traditional policy interventions such as tax incentives or financial education programs.43

Auto-escalation: this option would automatically increase pension contributions when there is a salary
increase. While employees have the option to opt out at any time, studies show that auto-enrollment
helps to increase savings as many people will not opt out.44

• Higher default rate: a higher default rate would ensure that employees by default make a maximum
contribution from their salary to their pension.
• Make millions of South Africans property owners or holders of recorded land rights. (See
interventions on spatial inequality).
• Promote the take up of employee share ownership by ensuring that legislation supports the ability to
link share ownership with performance or employment criteria.45
• Explore under what economic conditions the social contributory pension for unemployed and
informal workers as proposed by the World Bank’s country diagnostic report would be feasible.46
• Prevent state pensions from being used to finance government’s white elephants, and ensure state
pensions are managed responsibly with the primary goal to generate the highest returns possible for
members.
• Lower the barriers to entry for accessing investment products.

2.3.5 Mending the family

SDG target: Recognise and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of
public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared
responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.
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Without being prescriptive about the form which the modern family must take, it is important to
recognise the family unit as the most basic unit of society. A stable society rests, in part, on broader
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familial stability. There is a great deal which public policy can do to help support the family in its ability
to thrive. At all times our primary interest is to expand the choices available to families, not to constrain
them, and to place the interests of children first. The interventions below will help to ensure greater
gender equality and that support the ability of fathers to be involved in their children’s upbringing.
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Our priority interventions to mend the family include:

• Reduce teenage pregnancies by, in part, ensuring all high schools have access to birth control
methods and assistance
• Help families to remain together by prioritising, in urban housing policy, those who have found or are
already in possession of work and intend to relocate with their families. This will aid in minimising the
disintegration of the family due to labour migration.
• Implement strict measures to ensure that fathers pay maintenance. It should be difficult to purchase
an asset, open a bank account, achieve a good credit score, or apply for a passport if you have
defaulted on maintenance payments but have the means to pay.
• Ensure, however, that the law adequately recognises fathers as more than just providers of financial
support. In this regard we would look to amend the maintenance act to recognise non-financial
means of support in addition to financial support.
• Introduce shared parental leave in order to help equalise childcare responsibilities for working
professionals (policy proposal expanded below).

Equalising childcare

Leave, for all legal parents, has the power to contribute significantly to the recognition and
redistribution of care work and to transform deeply rooted inequalities between men and women. These
policies can be an effective mechanism for changing the gendered dynamics of caregiving at home, while
promoting women’s equal pay and advancement in the workforce.

Benartzi, S. (2017) How Digital Tools and Behavioral Economics Will Save Retirement. Harvard Business Review. Accessed at:
43

https://hbr.org/2017/12/how-digital-tools-and-behavioral-economics-will-save-retirement. 44Thaler, R. H., & Benartzi, S. (2004). Save

more tomorrow™: Using behavioural economics to increase employee saving. Journal of political Economy. 45Abott, B (2018). Can
government promote share ownership? Deloitte. Accessed at: https://www2.deloitte.com/za/en/pages/tax/articles/can-government-

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promote-share-ownership.html. 46World Bank. Systematic Country Diagnostic.
The tabling of the Labour Laws Amendment Bill in November 2015 provided an opportunity to revise
childcare leave provisions. The Bill recommended that parents, in addition to maternity leave, receive ten
consecutive days of parental leave. The Bill became law in 2018 and came into effect in January 2020.

These provisions point to a step in the right direction, however, the unequal allocation of leave
to fathers is still problematic and does not give families sufficient choice to determine their own
childcare arrangements. Under the new law, families who would choose for the pregnant mother to
return to work after giving birth and wish for the father to take up the bulk of the childcare still do not
have an option to do so.

While recognising that pregnant mothers require leave for their own health and that of the child (the
International Labour Organization and the BCEA mandate six weeks for such recuperation), maternity
leave allocated beyond that caters for time to bond and care for the child.

It is evident that the present framework unfairly discriminates regarding time allocated to bond and
care for the child by allocating pregnant mothers ten weeks of leave for care of the child while fathers,
adoptive and surrogate parents are awarded just ten days. This position is inconsistent with Section 9 of
the Constitution which provides that:

“The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against

anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex pregnancy,
marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age,
disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.”
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Maternity leave should remain, however, as a separate entitlement. Maternity leave should be viewed as
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having as its primary concern the health of the pregnant mother and the child. Pregnant women, as the
child bearers, have health requirements which are separate from the general care of the child once it is
born. The International Labour Organisation recommends six weeks of post-natal maternity leave.
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Parental leave, on the other hand, is concerned with the care of the child once born and necessarily
would apply to all parents; fathers, parents who have children via adoption or surrogacy arrangements,
and including the pregnant mother. As legal parents this is an equalisation that is long overdue.

In order to equalise childcare and to support families, our target would be to achieve at least ten
weeks of shared parental leave for all working families. This essentially converts maternity leave from 16
weeks, to six weeks maternity leave with ten weeks shared parental leave.

2.3.6 Health: Equalising access to quality healthcare

SDG target: Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to
quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable
essential medicines and vaccines for all.

The global trend in public health is to move towards providing universal healthcare. It is crucial that South
Africa follows suit. In order to realise this goal, we would:
• Allocate a universal subsidy to every South African citizen and legal resident. Every person will be
able to choose whether to buy public or private sector cover with their subsidy. The value of the
subsidy would be set in relation to an affordable and comprehensive package of services available
within the public health system.
• The universal subsidy would be funded from a combination of existing budget allocations for public
services together with a re-allocation of the off-budget tax credits presently allocated to medical
scheme members via the tax system.
• Provide for an information system that makes transparent the nature, quality and price of every
service provided by health facilities in the public and private sectors nationwide. Costs are kept down
as the public sector and private sector become more competitive.

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Other legislative reforms include:
• Reform the Council of Medical Schemes (CMS) to have a board that is independent of the Minister of
Health and the entities it (the CMS) regulates.
• Introduce autonomous public hospitals and district health authorities governed by independent
boards and with wide operational discretion allocated to executive heads to carry out their mandates.
• Insist on having clinically trained chief executives of hospitals and managers of health facilities.
• Extend nationally, the Western Cape’s reliance on inter-sectoral collaboration with non-
governmental organisations (NGOs), private companies (Clicks), pharmacists, private
physiotherapists, general practitioners (GPs) and complementary medicine and allied healthcare
professionals.

2.3.7 Early childhood malnutrition: Putting an end to stunting

SDG target: By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and
people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year
round.

SDG target: By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the
internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under five years of age, and
address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older
persons.

SDG target: Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all,
including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable.

Addressing stunting
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As of 2019, the child grant amount is R420 per child, this is R141 less than the food poverty line which
is calculated at R561 per month. The food poverty line refers to the cost of the food basket that enables
households to meet a normative nutritional standard (2 100 calories per person per day).47
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Children between one and ten years old require a daily calorie intake of between 1300 and 2000 calories.
While the effects of stunting before the age of two years old have conventionally been viewed as
irreversible, there is some evidence that improvements in stimulation and nutritional status after the age
of two may help to counter the effects of early stunting.48 Meaning that it is important to maintain the
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nutritional quality of children’s diets beyond the early years.

Parents reliant on the child grant are often not able to provide their children with a diet that meets
the minimum nutritional standard unless they have access to supplementary sources of income or food.
In addition, many recipients of the child grant are unemployed meaning that income to supplement the
grant is sparse. At present, the child grant is insufficient to meet the daily nutritional needs of all children
under 18.

In order to remain effective there is a strong case to be made that the child grant must be topped up
with a food grant linked to the computation of the food poverty line. There are regular adjustments
to the national poverty lines in order to keep up to date with changes in lifestyles as well as in the cost
of goods and services. Therefore, in order to maintain the integrity of the policy aim to fight childhood
malnutrition, it will be necessary for annual increases in the food grant to track the food poverty line.

The food grant would be computed by calculating the difference between the child grant and the food
poverty line. The top-up is to ensure that children have a fair chance to meet their daily nutritional
needs. Although the abundance of evidence reflects that families do not, for the most part, abuse grant
income we would make receipt of the food grant conditional on it being utilised for its intended purpose.
Teachers, nurses, social workers, and other public officials would be able to alert the Department of
Social Development on its improper use – in which case the food grant, after a fair assessment, could be
converted to a non-cash voucher for a defined period.

Statistics South Africa. (2019) National poverty Lines. Accessed at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P03101/P031012019.pdf
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Crookston, B., et al. (2013) Postinfancy growth, schooling, and cognitive achievement: Young Lives, The American Journal of
48

Clinical Nutrition, Vol 98 No 6. December 2013.

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The socio-economic case for ensuring that children are able to meet their nutritional needs has been
well developed. The child grant has been shown to be well suited for this purpose as it is generally used
well by households and not abused as is often expected. A study into the use and effectiveness of social
grants states that, “the preponderance of available evidence shows little evidence for social transfers
crowding out private remittances, elevating fertility rates, including among teens, generating labour
disincentive effects, or generally leading to inappropriate expenditure.”49

2.3.8 Spatial Inequality

SDG target: By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic
services and upgrade slums. By 2030, provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible,
green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with
disabilities.

SDG target: By 2030, provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport
systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special
attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities
and older persons.

The High-Level Panel report should be used as a starting point for policymaking as it is the culmination of
a consultative and evidence-based approach to land challenges. Expropriation without compensation is
a dangerous scapegoat for political failure and must be avoided. Our specific proposals across the three
areas of land reform are as follows:

Redistribution

• Redistribute state-owned land in order to provide housing for the poor.

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• Where it is necessary to make use of private property, make effective use of existing constitutional
provisions that allow government to expropriate land for land reform purposes. In particular the
Constitution already makes provision for compensation to be below market value in defined
circumstances.
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• Ensure that the government’s role to grow the economy remains a primary tool for ensuring that
more South Africans gain the means to independently afford or contribute to land ownership.
• Give land reform greater priority than it currently enjoys in the budget, in particular relative to non-
essential line items such as VIP security.
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• Amend Section 10 of the Housing Act (Act 107 of 1997) which concerns restrictions on the voluntary
sale of state-subsidised housing. The current probationary period of eight years will be reduced to
two, and an additional restriction will be added to prevent recipients of state-subsidised housing who
have successfully sold their property from reapplying.
• Not all land redistribution is geared towards agriculture. Ensure that beneficiaries are clearly defined.
Beneficiaries for land earmarked for housing, subsistence and small-scale business should be
identified through means testing, while land earmarked for large scale commercial activity should
include criteria such as commercial viability and potential economic value added to the broader
community.
• Use Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA) to ensure regulations that place too
onerous a burden on informal housing and informal economic activities are reviewed with a view to
providing exemptions for some areas. Building regulations are complicated and place unnecessary
burdens on enterprise, investment and development. Rather than creating an enabling environment
for informal enterprises, local governments tend to respond to the growth of such enterprises with
evictions and confiscation.
• Create a coordinating council in order to create a coordinated approach to addressing urbanisation
and urban land needs. Such a council could include the following departments: Rural Development
and Land Reform (DRDLR), Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), and Public
Works (DPW) and Human Settlements (DHS).
• Provide effective post-settlement support for emerging farmers.

Neves, D et al. (2009) The use and effectiveness of social grants in South Africa PLAAS and Economic Policy Research Institute.
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Accessed at: file:///Users/gwenngwenya1/Downloads/The_use_and_effectiveness_of_social_gran.pdf
Security of tenure

• Explore how blockchain technology can be used to recognise, record and administer effectively a
continuum of rights to land in South Africa. The DA supports recognising a wider range of rights than
those contained in the deeds registry system, although the latter remains the gold standard.
• The recording of land is a national competency that should be devolved to local levels but linked
within an overall data management system.
• Consideration should be given to rezoning land on which farm-dwellers reside from agricultural land
to residential land, in terms of SPLUMA.
• Amend the Traditional Leadership and Governance Framework Act (TLGFA) to make explicit the
distinction between the administrative authority of traditional leaders and councils on the one hand,
and authority over land and property on the other hand so as to make it clear that land rights vest in
individuals in terms of Section 25 of the Constitution, not in traditional authorities.

Restitution

• Restitution should be limited to claims filed in the original period.

• The DA will not support the reopening of the restitution process as it poses threat to tenure security.
• Dismiss claims filed in new period.
• Ensure that key vacancies are filled.
• Increase the capacity of staff through training .
• Conduct a skills audit to ensure that staff have the adequate knowledge and training to processes
land claims.
• Provide training that is designed to deal with restitution claims specifically in terms of the legal
requirements and historical context.
• Ensuring effective management structures.
• Enhance technological sophistication – increasing data collection, access and sharing.
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2.3.9 Discrimination
SDG target: Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome, including by eliminating
discriminatory laws, policies and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies and
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action in this regard.

Prohibition and elimination of discrimination

D

The Employment Equity (EE) Act makes provision for the elimination and prohibition of unfair
discrimination. The Act states that, “every employer must take steps to promote equal opportunity in the
workplace by eliminating unfair discrimination in any employment policy or practice.” It goes on to say
that, “no person may unfairly discriminate, directly or indirectly, against an employee, in any employment
policy or practice, on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status,
family responsibility, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, HIV status,
conscience, belief, political opinion, culture, language and birth.”

Prohibition and elimination of discrimination work hand in hand; the one sets a negative right and
the other asks employers to take active measures i.e. ‘steps’ to ensure equality of opportunity and to
eliminate discrimination.

The DA unequivocally supports the EE Act where it seeks to prohibit and eliminate unfair discrimination.
In this respect we share the Act’s conception of equality of opportunity as not passive. Some of the
positive steps which workplaces can, and do, take include:
• Adopting clear internal policies which make explicit what constitutes inappropriate behaviour in the
workplace.
• Reviewing of internal policies, culture, and practice to ensure that they do not result in the unfair
discrimination.
• Recruiting in order to consciously broaden the pool of applicants.
• Providing reasonable accommodation, among others, for cultural, religious, and linguistic differences.
• Providing equal opportunities within the workplace for training, development, and mentorship.

Like all unethical and/or unlawful conduct, discrimination cannot be prevented entirely, meaning that
organisational policies and the law need to provide recourse for those who find themselves victims of
unfair discrimination. Specifically, there should be consequence for unfair discrimination, and here too

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existing legislation makes provisions for the lodging of complaints and for a legal process to follow.
Fighting discrimination starts at the top, and for the country this means that elected representatives
must set the example. Unfortunately, politicians and government officials have often exacerbated
racist, xenophobic, and homophobic sentiment. There is no room in the DA for members or elected
representatives who unfairly discriminate on the basis of the criteria laid out in the EE Act.

Diversity in every organisation needs to be fiercely championed by equalising opportunity and

eradicating discrimination. However, we do not believe it is the proper place of the government to
prescribe the number or ratio of people of each race, gender, ethnic group, language, religious group,
political ideology, sexual orientation etc. which should be present in every workplace or sector. If diversity
is all of these things, then there would need to be a complex formula to ensure each quality which makes
us different is equitably represented in the workplace. We should not prescribe how each organisation
should uniformly look like.

Therefore, our support of the Employment Equity Act does not extend to its desire to impose
numerical goals based on demographics. We are lucky to live in a richly diverse society. As a result,
policies which provide meaningful opportunity to all, as opposed to an elite, coupled with strict and
positive measures to eliminate discrimination will ensure diverse institutions which reflect the choices of
individuals in society.

3. Conclusion

Without a sense of urgency to overcome historical injustice by those in government, South Africans
will not enjoy a prosperous future.
FT
The realisation that there is a global race to attract investment and skills has not fully dawned on those
in power; as current policies, including those targeted at redress, continue to increase transactional costs
for businesses and to drive away those with skills, entrepreneurial ability and capital. At the same time,
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the economy is barely growing and there is a decelerating domestic human capital pipeline.

If we act immediately to focus redress on the causes of economic exclusion for the majority, as
opposed to transferring resources between elites, we can get South Africa back on track sustainably and
D

for the long haul. The private sector can help us to accelerate our efforts for a more inclusive society; but
only if we adopt a whole of society approach which is flexible and aligned to the corporate value chain,
is global, and does not sacrifice returns in the pursuit of social impact. We believe this is possible if the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are adopted as the framework for redress.

To support corporate interventions in addressing the 17 SDGs, we have set ourselves our own priorities
where we govern, which can also be aligned to the SDGs: education, unemployment, stunting, gender
inequality, spatial inequality, wealth inequality, and discrimination. If we can get the support of public
stakeholders, these interventions will do more to affirm and empower the vast majority of South Africans
than the elitist approaches which have been experimented on for the past two decades.

Together, we can beat the past and build the future.

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