On the streets of a Karoo town in a welfare state

By PHAKAMISA MAYABA

Armchair critics could easily call out Mzansi as little more than a welfare state. Why not, when almost 30 million South Africans depend on some form of social grant? This figure shot up when government introduced the R350 relief of distress grant as a buffer during the Covid pandemic.

Credibly, our critic qualifies the indictment, chalking it up to a government of nostalgic ex-commies who’ve swallowed the Soviet-era Ayahuasca of some sort of utopia. The Leninist platitude of a chicken in every pot. To be fair, the critics are mostly right.

The politics of the stomach have bloated the mass democratic revolution so severely as to be synonymous with boeppense and single malt whisky. Factionalism within the ruling class is a cause for wholesale looting, because the fat cats are never sure when the gravy train will come to a halt.

So best make it count while your horse is in power and you still have a chance. The people can wait, but at least we’ve given them social grants to eke out minimal survival as we scratch our collective bureaucratic heads, incapable of effectively growing the economy.

It’s all fair comment, backed up by a corpus of documentary evidence derived from various commissions of inquiry and stellar investigative journalism. Politicking has evidently trumped sound economics. Thabo Mbeki, under whom there was at least some appreciable economic growth, was thrown to the wolves, replaced by a leader who’d not done much schooling and whose tenure remains derided as ‘the nine wasted years.’

And for nearly three decades, social grants appeared to ensure the ANC’s victory at the polls. So the armchair critic could rest easy knowing his conclusions were not just a wily thumb-suck but a reflection of what’s happening on the ground.

And that’s exactly where this story takes us, away from the intellectual punditry to a town in the Karoo known as Colesberg, in the Umsobomvu Local Municipality, in a province that contributes the least to South Africa’s GDP. According to a document prepared by the Colesberg Heritage Dialogue, a project that aims to empower the community, ‘write rewrite and reflect’ on the town’s marginalised history, and introduce various heritage-themed projects, there are 29 555 people living in this municipality.

According to the municipality’s Integrated Development Plan for 2022/7, 42% of them are jobless, and many more depend on social grants, with 15.25% of households having no income at all. Only 29.6% have Matric, 7% have a tertiary qualification, and some 15% have no schooling whatsoever.

These statistics paint a bleak picture, and those who take a dim view of the welfare situation may not appreciate anything worth writing home about. Except of course the misery, disgruntlement, and a town veering towards those social ills that are common when you’re in the clutches of poverty.

Against this background, we decide to venture out during social grant week (the proletariat’s payday), to see for ourselves what a welfare society might look like — what it translates into in a small-town economy where survival is the first priority and the idea that any material wealth will come from your efforts is a fantastical dream. Expecting to see drooling, troubled nyaope users, beggars at every intersection and unwashed bodies, in the main we find struggling people who walk dignified and upright.

An unemployed mom sits enjoying fish and chips outside a takeaway joint with her daughter. Not exactly fine dining, but it is probably the only meal she hasn’t had to cook herself that she will enjoy this month. For her, her small business run from her home means that things aren’t so bad. She occasionally treats herself to small luxuries, and nobody goes to bed hungry.

An unemployed Colesberg resident treats her daughter to a rare takeaway lunch. Image: eParkeni.

If there is one one area in which the chattering class get it wrong, it’s the assumption that those who rely on grants are lazy and have resigned themselves to being mere vassals of state benevolence. This couldn’t be further from the truth, especially not for people like Mrs Mekile. Now in her eighties, she is a natural-born hustler, and her walk – strong and confident – amply proves it.

For years, she would haul her wares –a braai stand, the dough for roosterkoek and meat for the braai chops – to the centre of town. Monday to Saturday, but Sundays were her days off – only because God couldn’t be made to wait.

Then the pandemic struck, and it was goodbye to the extra income. She applied for the government relief package, but nothing ever came of it. Today, in her flowing dress and doek, she’s pushing a trolley, the specials catalogue spread out in front of her, spending ‘Ramaphosa’s money’ as the locals refer to the grants. The funding would’ve meant the world, but there are no hard feelings. She has since passed her business on to someone else who is apparently doing well.

The tenacious Mrs Mekile doing some shopping. Image: eParkeni.

You remember that story we once did on Sipho Sandi, the snazzily dressed shebeen upstart? Well, his gripe, just as with Mrs Mekile, was the red tape barring the way for local entrepreneurs to access funding. He’s still at it, peddling booze whilst his wife rises to set up her small food business in town. That’s the universal grievance here: government funding is a nightmare, but the show must go on because waiting for that could mean hunger and the furniture being repossessed.

Mrs Sandi gets on with her hustle irrespective of any funding problems. Image: eParkeni.

For Nathi Mensah, it’s a matter of simply making the salon work. As a Ghanaian, it’s doubtful he’ll be getting any state sponsorship. During the month, business is sludgy but come grant week, in walk grandmothers, the grand kids atow. The usually quiet salon is buzzing with youthful requests for haircuts in that style of the footballer Neymar.

‘It’s busy,’ says a grinning Mensah, ‘so at least the rent should be covered.’ Grant week, he says, makes a massive difference to his business month after month. Indeed, even the pavement outside is full of people with plastics full of groceries. Ditto the shops. Another glaring aspect is the number of grandmothers who are hands-on in raising the next generation, this alongside female-led households.

The people behind the Colesberg Heritage Dialogue are amongst many who’ve seen the wisdom of getting up and doing things for themselves. They’ve put together a comprehensive policy document. Ultimately, they envision a Colesberg that will write its own story and showcase its history.

One hopes that they will not meet similar hurdles that affect those at the grass roots. Obstacles through which they endure regardless: after all, they’ve learnt the hard way that sometimes in this world, it’s every man for himself. And the critics, especially the armchair variant, ultimately will do nothing for you.

FEATURED IMAGE: A hectic day in the supermarket during social grant week. Image: eParkeni.

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on Phakamisa Mayaba’s website, eParkeni. Used with permission.