Chairperson, hon Minister, hon MECs, hon members, I do not know if the audience is going to listen to me after such a long good lecture. [Interjections.] I would like to quote the following:
Poverty is pain, it feels like a disease, it attacks a person not only materially, but also morally. It eats away one's dignity and drives one into total despair.
A poor woman called Moldova said these words.
Deep class and racial divisions mark South Africa's legacy of apartheid. While 40% of the total population is income poor, the percentage for black South Africans is 60%. Almost three quarters of the poor live in woefully underdeveloped rural areas. Many people lack adequate housing and access to basic social services. The democratic governments elected since 1994 have placed poverty and inequality at the centre of their development agendas.
South Africa's antipoverty policies, which were part of its RDP, began in 1996 in order to engineer growth through increased public expenditure on such items as housing, electricity, water, education and health. Since then, antipoverty policies have been more explicitly incorporated in Gear, which rallies on market-led growth in order to increase the resources for redistribution.
Poverty is a multidimensional problem requiring comprehensive multisectoral programmes linked to national policy-making. South Africa is one of the few countries which cater for poverty reduction through its regular Government budget. The Department of Finance has also set up a special poverty relief fund which will be able to mobilise some external resources. Other Government departments can obtain resources from the fund only if they have already made their budgets pro-poor. This arrangement increases incentives for a greater focus on poverty in all Government programmes.
In per capita terms, South Africa is an upper-middle-income country. But despite this relative wealth, the experience of most South African households is of outright poverty or of continuing vulnerability to being poor. The distribution of income and wealth in South Africa is among the most unequal in the world, and many households still have unsatisfactory access to education, health care, energy and clean water.
The ANC Government is committed to eradicating poverty and closing the gap between the rich and the poor. The ANC Government puts priority on addressing the lack of access to basic social services. A total of 4,5 million people have gained access to potable water and more than 600 000 inexpensive houses are under construction. Today we have a free and compulsory ten-year education for our children and free medical care for pregnant women and children under six years of age. There has also been progress in providing secure land tenure to labour tenants who where previously subjected to arbitrary and unfair evictions.
I want to remind my colleagues that some of us here today created poverty in this country with inhuman policies. Some of us are still benefiting from the fruits of those policies to the detriment of the majority of the citizens.
The ANC believes that the fight against poverty can be won by bearing the following in mind. Economic growth and human development are linked. To achieve a better life for all, the capabilities of disadvantaged communities, households and individuals should be advanced. Government should increase the emphasis on redistribution measures. Government needs to be more assertive in facilitating the transfer of assets and services from the wealthy to the poor, matched by market, institutional and spatial reforms benefiting the less well-off.
In conclusion, as the ANC Government we will strive to make growth more pro- poor. We will continue to target inequality at all levels and we will empower the poor. [Applause.]