Monthly dole the answer

Peter Bruce is wrong about the basic income grant of R2,000 per month for all adults. We cannot afford this: it would cost six times more than the current grants. Much better, to take the place of child grants, would be a dole of R2,000 a month.

We have some 8-million unemployed, so this would cost R16bn a month, also more than the current child grants but affordable. Why the dole (an apt, if frank, name for permanent unemployment benefits)? Massive advantages would accrue. Child grants are poorly focused: they are

paid to both the employed and unemployed, and they are paid locally and therefore trap millions of unemployed in poverty-stricken rural areas, where access to government health and education is poor.

A dole (to replace child grants) could eventually urbanise, and thus benefit, many of the very poorest, often residing in rural areas. This assumes that a prerequisite for the dole would be that beneficiaries live in or near, say, the biggest 20 towns and cities in SA.

These larger towns and cities are far better placed to provide the health and educational services so desperately needed by the poorest among us.

Thirdly, registration for the dole would bring to light the scale and nature of the unemployment crisis — by far our greatest threat as a nation. To discourage cheating, it could be required that all wages (whether attracting tax or not) and also fees paid to the self-employed, be recorded by the employer via the South African Revenue Service. While onerous, this would enhance our potential tax base and provide valuable economic data.

The government will likely resist this as it clings to the dream of the millions of rural unemployed eventually becoming small-scale farmers; it does not want them to move to the cities. This dream would, however, be better realised by providing the children of the very poor with better life chances in the cities, so that they are in a position to make their own decisions about their life course.

Willem Cronje

Free State