It is a well-known fact that the ANC has plundered the fiscus over the past three decades and it has now come full circle. 27.8 million of the most vulnerable South Africans are now at severe risk of losing their grants because of a party that puts itself before its citizens. This is why the DA has put together a comprehensive set of targeted interventions to ensure that this does not happen.
While social grants and other forms of social welfare are never an adequate substitute for economic growth and job creation, they play a vital role in protecting the most vulnerable in society from extreme poverty.
Furthermore, they are social grants are a constitutional right and any suggestion that the DA would take them away if elected into national government is patently false and misleading.
Some of the key interventions the DA proposes in its policy are:
- Increase the child support grant to the same level as the official food poverty line. This means that the child support grant, under a DA government, will be increased from R510 to R760 per month.
- Ensure the elderly are financially stable in their retirement through introducing automatic enrolment of employees in pension schemes, whom can choose to opt out of the scheme should they wish;
- Consider empowering the unemployed with cash transfers for basic services;
- To lower the cost of food, a DA national government would reduce the taxes South Africans must pay for essential food items;
- Ensure that the poor have access to quality basic healthcare services through Universal Health Coverage;
- Reduce teenage pregnancy through providing increased access to sex education, and contraception methods in high schools;
- Develop and implement fatherhood programmes with NGOs and community centres that provide family and children services and initiatives;
- Create a national plan to tackle homelessness in South Africa. Currently, without a national policy, there is no fair distribution of funds across provinces to address homelessness;
- Ensure that survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) can easily access the help they need. This means providing them with important support services, such as healthcare, legal assistance, shelter, and essential items like dignity kits; and
- Increase safe spaces for children at risk of abuse or exposure to violence or risky activities (gangs, drugs, and alcohol).
The DA encourages all South Africans to read our policy and to join our fight against poverty. Together we can create a fairer and more prosperous South Africa but that requires us to register to vote in order to remove the ANC from power.
Find a summary here.