Speaker and hon members, the Anti-Poverty Programme is not a stand-alone programme with a set of projects and a budget. Rather, it is about the co-ordination of various interventions in targeting poverty alleviation. Moreover, the programme also encourages a co-ordinated approach to the involvement of stakeholders in poverty alleviation initiatives.
Within this broader Anti-Poverty Programme, the War on Poverty Campaign identifies citizens who are entitled to various government services but who, for some reason, are unable to receive them. The programme has had a special focus on identifying change agents in poor households with the objective of assisting them to spearhead change in the situations in which they find themselves.
Thus, while the War on Poverty Campaign does not focus on empowerment through land tenure and ownership of rural land, it goes without saying that access to land is an important element in ensuring that people have food security. It also further ensures sustainable livelihoods, all of which ultimately results in poverty alleviation. The main programme to empower people in terms of land reform is the Recapitalisation and Development Programme, which provides training and infrastructural support to emerging farmers.
Furthermore, the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme provides support to rural communities through the facilitation of social and economic infrastructure to enable the creation of sustainable livelihoods.
During my visits to some of the poorest districts in the country, I have been encouraged to see that where people have access to land, regardless of its size, efforts are under way to develop community food gardens that not only provide food for the household, but also in some instances create a surplus that is traded or sold on the open market.
These initiatives must be supported and replicated in all poor communities as this advances self-sufficiency and goes a long way towards restoring people's dignity as they can now provide for the nutritional needs of their families. Thank you for your attention. [Applause.]
Speaker, I should like to thank the hon Deputy President for the response.
The issue that I would like to focus on first is the protection of land rights for women in rural areas. As you know, women are at the forefront of food security in rural areas. Are there any measures relating to this?
Second is the issue of enhancing rural people's asset base by ensuring that people who own land also have rights over the mineral resources. The current situation is that there is no obligation in regard to the landowner's rights on that land at the same time. Therefore investors can come in and invest in the mineral resources without having any obligation to get into a partnership or an investment deal with the landowner.
Last is the question of paralegal institutions of credit for rural areas. Here, for instance, I would like to refer to a case that we had yesterday involving a report from the Small Enterprise Finance Agency, Sefa. Out of 210 disbursements made by them, 90 went to Gauteng, seven to the Eastern Cape, four to KwaZulu-Natal and six to Limpopo. Those are rural areas. There is no access for them. That is really the issue that I would like to raise. Thank you.
Speaker, I should like to thank the hon Ngonyama.
Land in rural areas is communal land which falls under the jurisdiction of traditional leaders. Its distribution and allocation are based on the principle of usufruct - that the land is yours for as long as you utilise it. If you don't utilise it, the community, under the leadership of the traditional leader, has the right to allocate the land to someone else within that community. That is my understanding of land rights for people in rural communities.
That extends to women as well. These norms are peculiar to certain communities and areas. For instance, in KwaZulu-Natal, a married woman is in charge of the household's assets, and that includes land. So, if you marry a woman and your wife comes from, say, Venda or Gauteng and you create tensions within the family, the extended family ensures that your wife and children remain in charge of the land and all the assets. If you are in a position to move out, you move out with your jacket, but the rest of the assets remain with the wife. So the land rights for women in rural communities are secured according to the traditional norms.
I will have to dig up information for you on the Small Enterprise Finance Agency in regard to how best we can ensure that the rural communities in the provinces that you alluded to get access to those services. Thank you.
Thank you, Speaker. Hon Deputy President, arising from your response, we in the ACDP agree and appreciate that one of the most pressing challenges is to expand work opportunities for young people. We also agree that a wide range of measures is needed to achieve this, including further education, training, and public and private employment opportunities.
So we as the ACDP particularly welcome the tax incentive announced by the Minister of Finance in last week's Budget, which is aimed at sharing the cost of employing work seekers. Deputy President, while Parliament will consider the necessary amendment to the tax legislation to enable such an incentive, has agreement been reached at Nedlac on this issue? Otherwise, the whole issue will again be delayed and I am sure you will agree that we cannot afford another delay.
The reason why I am asking this is that this morning in the Finance committee a trade union representative again expressed opposition, even to this tax incentive. Thank you.
Speaker, I should like to thank the hon Swart. I wouldn't know if that trade union representative was expressing a personal opinion or a mandated position. So it is difficult for me to say whether there would be resistance. However, my reading of the situation is that the Budget was generally accepted by the broadest cross-section of society, including organised labour. Thank you.
Hon Maluleka, you are next. [Interjections.] Those who are not in the House should please not press the button! [Laughter.]
It was pressed by mistake, hon Speaker.
All right. The next speaker should proceed.
Speaker, I would like to ask the hon Deputy President whether or not it is true that all of us in this House pride ourselves on being the true representatives of the people in our constituencies. Therefore, it is our obligation to play a leading role in the war against poverty, including speeding up the process of the acquisition of land by all those who need it. Thank you.
Speaker, I agree with the hon Stone. Thank you. [Laughter.]
Speaker, ons in die opposisie moet herhaalde kere luister na beloftes oor hoe die regering planne het om armoede aan te pak. Wat ons egter vandag werklik wil weet - en ons het di vraag verlede jaar ook gevra, en nie 'n direkte antwoord daarop gekry nie - is hoeveel geld reeds aan die anti-armoedeprogram bestee is, en of daar 'n tasbare effek op armoede is, en of ons daardie lys kan kry. Dankie. (Translation of Afrikaans paragraph follows.)
[Mr J J VAN DER LINDE: Speaker, as members of the opposition we have to listen repeatedly to the promises that the government makes with regard to plans on how to address poverty. What we really would like to get clarity on today actually - and we posed this question last year also and did not receive any direct answer to it - is how much money has been spent already with regard to the Anti-Poverty Programme, whether there has been a tangible impact on poverty, and whether we could obtain that specific list. Thank you.]
Speaker, as I indicated, the War on Poverty Programme is not a stand-alone programme with its own stand-alone budget. Essentially what we do is to take government departments to poor communities and intervene to ensure that members of such communities who are South African citizens and who, for one reason or another, do not access services that are due to them, actually do access such services. We then ensure that the relevant department, either at provincial or national level, attends to such needs. It may range from a child who has no birth certificate to a young person who has dropped out of school due to peer pressure. So we attend to that whole range of problems. These are services that are available, and that are budgeted for in the various departments of government, at both the provincial and national levels.
So, it is not possible to quantify in monetary terms how much has been spent on this programme. Thank you.
Progress made in War on Poverty Campaign
4. Ms H F Matlanyane (ANC) asked the Deputy President:
What (a) progress has been made in the War on Poverty Campaign (i) in broad terms and (ii) to improve the conditions of the unemployed youth and (b) challenges remain? NO335E
Speaker, thank you very much. Hon members, more than 316 000 households or 1,6 million people that live in poverty have been profiled in about 350 of the most deprived wards in the country to date.
The War on Poverty Campaign targets young people from poor households as change agents, given the potential that they represent to break the cycle of poverty in their households. We seek to improve the capability and opportunities of these young people by connecting them to available opportunities in order for them to rise from poverty and, in turn, to take their own families and communities out of poverty. Thus, the role of the household change agent is to monitor and ensure that commitments made by both government and the households to lifting the household out of poverty are on track. Public employment through the Expanded Public Works Programme, the Community Work Programme and the National Rural Youth Service Corps is used as the primary instrument to address the unemployment of household change agents.
The Community Work Programme provides up to 120 working days per year for unemployed young people, while the National Rural Youth Service Corps has 11 500 young people enlisted to undergo training in different areas of skills and expertise for a period of two years. This period will be extended to four years to incorporate the placement of household change agents in work areas or to assist them to start small businesses.
Let us now look at just some examples of the work that government has done, particularly in rural communities, to empower unemployed young people. Following our visit to Msinga in KwaZulu-Natal in 2011, the then Deputy Minister of Public Works returned to that area to start a programme for the young people there.
In this regard the Department of Public Works recruited 110 change agents to work on the department's water treatment plant. These young people were provided with a six-month training programme, during which period they received stipends. Ten of these young people participated in an internship programme and five of them have since returned to school. On completion of the training programme, the remaining 95 were absorbed into continuing work on the water treatment plant and they were offered permanent employment. As part of this initiative, 32 qualified artisans and technicians were brought in to work as supervisors in the programme.
At Eshowe the Department of Public Works recruited 20 young people for learnerships and six for internship programmes from the group identified as change agents.
At Gombani village, Vhembe District in Limpopo province, the Department of Public Works started a project of women in construction, in which they recruited 48 women to build houses in their community. These women have since built 22 houses. Twenty-four young people were also recruited to work on the same project.
A similar project was initiated at Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape, where a brick-making machine was purchased through the support of the Department of Human Settlements to enable women to participate in alternative construction methods.
These are examples of how change agents are empowered in order to lift their families out of the grip of poverty. Thank you.
Hon Speaker, ...
... ke a leboga, Motlat?amopresidente. [... thank you, Deputy President.]
I am very happy with the response that was given. The response is that they are ensuring that ... [Interjections.]
Order! Order!
... the rural poor are aware that they are on board, because the ANC government is a caring government. The War on Poverty Programme broadly seeks to eradicate 30% of the lowest poverty levels by improving the quality of life amongst the poor. This is being done by ensuring that households and the needs of families are profiled and immediately linked to the basket of the community.
I know for a fact that there is a challenge of co-ordination among government departments. Deputy President, is there a problem? Are we facing any challenges in so far as alignment and co-ordination of government services are concerned, because these play a significant role in attaining some of these achievements? We know for a fact that there are changes in the lives of the poor people of our country, especially in the rural areas. I thank you.
Hon Speaker, thank you very much. Alignment is really part of Co-operative Governance, which co-ordinates the work of the three spheres of government. What the War on Poverty Programme does is, as I said, to take government departments to the poorest communities in the country. Thank you.
Speaker, thank you very much. Mr Deputy President, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, report indicated that income inequality remains extremely high. Education outcomes are poor, at best average and uneven. Frustration is growing with Public Service delivery failures and corruption.
Don't you think, Deputy President, that the government needs a holistic and well-crafted plan to deal with poverty, because it is becoming a threat to our new democracy? Thank you.
Hon Speaker, thank you very much. The National Development Plan, NDP, was adopted by this House. It will now serve as a framework for the programmes of action of government departments.
Identified in the NDP is the matter of inequality that the OECD report has raised. We are well aware of the problems of inequality, poverty and unemployment. The NDP, the New Growth Path, and the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission are aimed at critically addressing the issues of unemployment and poverty because, once our people who are able-bodied are able to find work, their dignity will be restored and the inequality gap will be narrowed as they begin to earn an income. This is a problem that government is quite alive to. Thank you.
Thank you, hon Speaker. I don't think we are getting across just how serious the problem of youth unemployment is. We need to create 4,7 million jobs for people under the age of 34 years, while the Deputy President talks about 20 people hired here and six people hired there. He just repeated some of the marginal programmes that the President announced in his state of the nation address. We could, of course, look to Nedlac and their Youth Employment Accord for ideas on creating youth jobs. They talk about public sector brigades and youth employment set-asides. These are weak ideas to tackle our biggest challenge.
The bottom line is that the National Development Plan says that we need to lower the cost of hiring young people. It talks about active labour market policies like the youth wage subsidy. Last week the Minister of Finance retabled the youth wage subsidy, but he called it the youth employment tax incentive, Yeti. It is structured in exactly the same way as the youth wage subsidy. But Cosatu responded to this Budget by saying, and I quote: "We reiterate our rejection of the Youth Wage Subsidy as an incentive for employers to hire young people."
So, hon Deputy President, why is the Minister of Finance the only member of the Cabinet talking about this Yeti? How does the Deputy President think the policy will now be implemented, when Cosatu has spent the past three years blocking it? Is it because the youth wage subsidy is like the mythical Yeti? We all hear that it exists, but nobody ever sees it! [Laughter.]
Hon Speaker, thank you. Firstly, the question is not a follow-up question to the question that I had to answer. That is why there will be a gap, because my response was not really about youth employment or unemployment. [Interjections.]
Order! Order!
It was very clear that I was referring to change agents. As I said, we profile the poorest households. In each one of them we try to identify someone that we can assist in order for that person to change the conditions of that family.
The broader question of youth unemployment is a tinderbox. We all know and we all agree that it is a tinderbox, and government is trying to respond to that challenge, not by employing one approach or one instrument only, but by employing a multiplicity of responses. As you correctly pointed out, it is a huge, huge challenge, and we are aware of it and alive to it.
That is why the efforts of government range from offering bursaries, to the absorption of young people into further education and training colleges. The Minister of Higher Education and Training is also looking at other ways of empowering these young people. We are aware that there are about 2,8 million in the cohort 18 years old to 24 years old who are not in any institution of learning and who are not in any job.
So the response is much, much broader. All I am explaining is that the response to the specific question put to me was not really about youth unemployment in its entirety.
The youth employment tax incentive will work. We are quite confident, as government, that it will work and we will employ it. Working people inside and outside of Cosatu will come to understand that this is an important instrument to address this burning problem of youth unemployment. Thank you. [Applause.]
Thank you, hon Speaker. Deputy President, does taking the War on Poverty Campaign to unemployed youth specifically include encouraging youth to be job creators? Also, is there any focus on doing voluntary community work in order to gain experience and testimonials, as appears to be the case in other African countries? Thank you.
Yes, indeed, in certain areas young people are encouraged to provide services to communities on a voluntary basis, and they do so. Some of them, I know, have even been recruited by the Department of Social Development and given the opportunity to train as social workers precisely because of the voluntary work that they do as caregivers as well as in the profiling of communities, particularly in the most poor and depressed communities. Thank you.