2 responses to “Child care”

1. 

   Esme Nortje

   13 years Ago

   I would love to know the percentage of the South African population who are paying taxes and are therefore contributing to these grants. As a single parent I have put my children through school and now through varsity with my second-job and plenty of sacrifice> Perhaps I am looking after a third, fourth, fifth child… whom I have not met.

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2. 

   Tom Mostert

   13 years Ago

   According to the article published by PoliticsWeb, Minister Bathabile Dlamini claims that 10.3 million children are benefiting from government social grants.

   According to StatsSA’s Mid-year population estimates by population group, age and sex for 2011, there are 20.98 million South Africans aged 0-19 years. Logically, this means that every second child in South Africa is getting a social grant. Yes, every second child (if you sting the little critters randomly in a long queue and round off the roughest edges)!?

   Is it really possible that our government is that extraordinarily generous, or that South African parents are so hard-up that every second child needs government support? Or has someone perhaps done some creative spin to prop up the real figures?

   It is true that the plight of children is a serious and complex issue, but for concerned South Africans and the international community to take this problem seriously, there has to be more transparent accountability from government.

   It would be far more logical to report the number of households receiving grants, and make it clear how many children in each of these households need to live off the grant they collectively receive. The statement makes it sound as if 10.3 million children receive grants individually, which I am sure is not the case. If seven children in one household collectively receive a R300 grant per month, it looks a lot different from 10.3 million children receiving grants! By using statements like “the right social grant to the right person, Njalo!” and “(It) reaches out to ensure that all eligible persons receive their relevant social grant”, the article creates the impression that grants are awarded on a per-person basis and not a per-household basis. Can they prove that this is the case?

   If the stats look too good to be true, remember when the 19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli called out the folly of government statistics: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

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