They are not hiding under the democracy that they have not implemented. [Interjections.] Let me not get into this. It is going to disturb me. [Laughter.] [Interjections.]
Another matter we would like to raise is that we are concerned about the fact that parents start applying for the grant when the children are two years old. Colleagues, the demand for social assistance will only diminish when we have a society and economy that is able to create jobs and absorb labour. I think we tried to mention in our inputs that this is what we are going to start doing. We are also going to have a pilot study. Our investment in early childhood development, ECD, is proof that we do not want to create a dependent society, because this is not a short-term issue. It is long term, it needs our effort and it will be based on a robust economy.
Something else we want to say is that the United Nations Children's Fund, Unicef, has shown that social grants are self-targeting and they tend to reach people who require them. This is empirical evidence from people who have done research. Some of the things that people are saying are based on face value. For instance, some of us here are praising Brazil. Brazil gives a quarter of its people social assistance, so it is not like Brazil is not giving out social assistance. That is why Brazil has been able to close the gap between the rich and the poor, and that is why that country is well known for being able to fight poverty. One of the programmes they are using is social assistance. So, I think we should stop using words like "unsustainable" and "dependency" without evidence. Let us be sure of what we are saying.
On the issue of whoonga, some research has been done and it has been discovered that whoonga is mostly made from something different, not from antiretrovirals, ARVs. Yes, there is something that people are doing to mix ARVs and Rattex and other things. But whoonga is heroin. It is something that is mixed predominantly with heroin, which is also wrong, of course.
Something else we want to support you in is that there cannot be a developmental state without appropriate social policy initiatives. We need to have very strong social policy initiatives so that we are able to support our vulnerable people. That is why we are saying South Africa is a developmental state. We are also looking into the issues of comprehensive social security, which includes national health insurance.
With regard to appeals, we had an estimated backlog of 17 000 cases as at 31 May 2011. We are going to be able to finalise the backlog by 30 December 2011. We are going to be able to do that throughout this year. I have the statistics and the breakdown of cases that we have been able to deal with, including those that involve government officials - not only social development officials. When I talk about government, I mean from national, provincial and even local government level. There are people who have agreed to pay, or who have acknowledged their debts. Out of those, 5 000 are public servants. Thank you very much, Chairperson. [Time expired.]