Hon Chairperson, hon Ministers and Deputy Minister, Cope has been saddened by the brutal killing of Miss Sithembile Sibiya of Umlazi H township in KwaZulu-Natal. Her body was dumped at Isidingo Combined School, J Section in Umlazi two weeks ago. She was not only stabbed ...
... wahlinzwa njengesilwane, wabekwa itshe ekhanda. [... she was butchered like an animal, and they also put a stone on her head.]
We send our deepest condolences to her family. The trauma the pupils of Isidingo went through after they saw the body is beyond imagination.
We urge everybody in the House to fight these satanic and barbaric acts in our society.
Nabo ababulali noxa bengekafunyanwa iintsuku zabo zibaliwe. [Even though the killers have not yet been arrested, their days are also numbered.] Miss Ngwenya was brutally killed by her boyfriend, who is a police officer, and buried in a vegetable garden. The newly planted vegetables covered her grave. After nine months, her body was found. What a shame.
Abuse against women and children is the talk of the country. We pretend as if we do not know the perpetrators but it is obvious that they are our partners, sons, fathers, brothers, nephews and uncles. Sometimes it does not make sense when people blame substance abuse. It is a normal person who takes drugs for reasons best known to him, and in the end the government has to waste large sums of money helping somebody who took a decision to abuse drugs. It makes one very angry when the country has so many social ills to deal with.
It is high time that the departments - led by the Department of Social Development - in conjunction with civil society, traditional and community leaders, conduct awareness campaigns in all nine provinces. The campaigns will assist the country to actually wake women up. Statistics on women and child abuse are alarming. South Africa is a leader in terms of violence against women. Official statistics show that around 65 000 sexual offences were committed in 2012. On average, a woman is raped every minute in South Africa. The Department of Justice also estimates that one in four women in South Africa is a survivor of domestic violence. At least one woman is killed every six days by her male partner, and one in every six women is murdered by her male intimate. It will be vital to consult with communities in seeking a solution to this scourge. It is clear that government efforts are not enough and do not bear fruits. Aba bantu bayazana. [These people know each other.]
We applaud the work done by the South African Social Security Agency, Sassa, to improve their services. There has been a great improvement compared to the previous years, although there are still challenges in service delivery. For the first 10 years, Sassa received a qualified audit report, and it continues to recover millions from fraud and corruption cases. Some offices have been renovated but there are still staff shortages in local services. They have to pull up their socks. [Applause.]
We commend the good work done by the chief executive officer, Miss Peterson, and her unannounced visits in the provinces. Her visibility gives hope for a better service. [Applause.]
The reregistration period should be extended until all beneficiaries are registered. In some offices the beneficiaries are turned away and told to come back the next day. Some in rural areas pay a lot of money to travel to the Sassa offices. The department has to consider closing down the district offices because they are not serving any purpose. The capturing of applications is done and completed at local service offices. It will assist the department to have the local service areas, LSAs, and regional offices, and to have staff at either the LSAs or the regional offices.
The National Development Agency, NDA, has an important role to play in service delivery. It is amazing to notice that the number of young beneficiaries is rising, especially child support grants beneficiaries. The beneficiaries are young, energetic and economically viable. If they depend and live on grants now, how long will they receive the grants - until the child is 19 years old?
What experience will they have when they no longer receive grants? Will they be employable? The answer is no, because every job advertised requires work experience. We once suggested that child support grants must be conditional, and education to both the mother and the child should be one of the conditions. We therefore urge the NDA to consider funding projects that can improve the lives of the poor by creating more jobs.
Farming and agriculture remain the best sectors in our country. We have rich and arable land which can feed the country and export surplus. There are men and women who can farm and produce on a large scale. We have to overcome the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality. These challenges were not created by God, they are man-made, and we will only overcome them if we stop talking and start implementing.
Many children under the age of five years will die due to a lack of access to drinking water and basic sanitation.
The department is responsible for registering early childhood development centres, ECDs, subsidising the centres, covering the costs of poor children and developing quality programmes. Most of the time, more and more money is spent on prisoners. It costs about R200 per day to keep a prisoner in prison, while it costs roughly R13 or R15 to keep a child in the early childhood development centre. The Minister has to consider this because it is the reason why our education system sometimes does not have a solid foundation, especially with regard to literacy and numeracy.
There is a serious problem with regard to disabled people. There are no statistics for disabled people around the country. It shocked me when I discovered a disabled lady, Bonelwa Mvakwendlu, in the Munitata Building in Mthatha, who had to walk using crutches three floors up to her office. I asked myself why she has not been offered an office on the ground floor. It means that the working environment for the disabled is not user-friendly.
The improvement of the community development programmes, CDPs, can assist in identifying the disabled, and the department be informed about them. Most stay in shacks with no one to attend to them, without wheelchairs, and are bedridden. Their housing and other services, like user-friendly sanitation facilities have to be prioritised.
We urge the hon Minister to intervene in the matter of the closing down of the chronic, physical and mental caring homes due to the withdrawal of funding by the department of health in KwaZulu-Natal. There are people who were admitted to the home at the age of 15 years and they are now 51 years old and have nowhere to go.
The Central Drug Authority board has to provide information to the department. What are they actually doing because we still see taverns close to schools, drunken youths on the street and unlicensed alcohol dealers? They have to ... [Time expired.]