SACP backs call for basic income grant
THE GROWING unemployment in South Africa, especially among young people, has prompted the SACP to support the call by trade unions and other movements for the introduction of a universal basic income grant in the country.
The calls for the income grant mounted after StatsSA announced that the figure of unemployment stood at 34.45%, and that the number is likely to grow following the violent attacks on businesses during unrest in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Most of the affected businesses were forced to shut down.
SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said these dismal statistics must serve as a wake-up call, not least to those in government who continue in their blinkered way to impose ultra-orthodox, neoliberal austerity.
“They do so at a time when much of the rest of the world, including most of our peer group developing countries, have responded to the Covid-19 crisis with a range of imaginative, heterodox stimulus interventions.
“The levels of social desperation in our country are evident in the fact that more than six million South Africans have registered for the meagre R350 per month Special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant.
“It is less than what the richest one-percenters in our country spend in one hour on a single light meal. It was a grant that was cruelly cut off in the middle of the ongoing Covid-19 crisis. It has thankfully now been reinstated, but only until the end of February next year,” Nzimande said.
He said following the scenes of desperate mass looting in early July (a powder-keg, of course, irresponsibly lit by would-be insurrectionists) senior voices within the government appeared to be open to considering a universal basic income grant.
“But that door seems to be shutting. Timidity in the face of crisis appears to be returning. Faith in some miracle private investor-driven labour market recovery continues to be the carrot on the end of a long stick,” he said.
He said in 1995 unemployment in the narrow definition stood at a 16th position of the Gear neoliberal shock-therapy in 1996, unemployment rose rapidly to 26.1% by 1998.
“With increasing financial liberalisation, unemployment reached a first high point of 27.8% in 2002. With the commodity boom in succeeding years there was some marginal respite, but unemployment in South Africa remained at world-record levels above 20%. That marginal levelling off all came to a predictable end with the global capitalist recession of 2008. By 2010 unemployment at 25.8% began its remorseless climb once more,” Nzimande said.
He said there was a lot of correct emphasis in the health-care sector on the need for evidence-based policies. He said it was an emphasis that was woefully absent when it came to economic policy.
According to the SACP, there needs to be a rapid emergency response to the growing unemployment.
He said the SACP joins a wide array of trade union and social movement forces in calling for the introduction of a universal basic income grant (U-Big) at a reasonable level.
“It needs to be universal to avoid excessive administrative costs. A false binary is often advanced between a U-Big and jobs, between social security and economic growth,” Nzimande said.