| Breaking
down barriers to social support
 HIV/AIDS
is sweeping illness and death through our country,
robbing households and even whole communities
of breadwinners and caregivers, and leaving grandparents
and young children, who are in many cases ill
and very poor, to fend for themselves or for each
other. What is being done to ease the financial
burdens placed upon these shoulders?
ACESS (Alliance for Children’s Entitlement
to Society Security) is a national body of over
500 organisations mobilising for the reform of
social policy for children in South Africa. Through
raising awareness, providing updated information,
networking in communities and training, it aims
to empower poor people and those affected by HIV/AIDS
with the knowledge they need to obtain social
grants for themselves, their families, friends
and neighbours. ACESS also fights for the rights
of those who are unable to obtain these welfare
funds; the Alliance calls for the Department of
Social Development to accept alternative proof
of identity (such as signed school reportcards)
in cases where applicants do not have bar-coded
ID-books or other required documents, and to provide
help for transport costs to for those who cannot
afford to get to the offices handling these applications.
The Department of Social Development is making
efforts, despite the challenges of staff training,
lack of administration capacity and increasing
levels of false documents and social grant fraud
(which costs the government over R1,5 billion
per year), to widen its reach and ensure that
more grants are made accessible to those in need.
Minister Zola Skweyiya has committed his Department
to strengthening families and households so that
more children, as well as elderly and disabled
citizens, can be supported, and has confirmed
that assistance with transport costs is provided.
“By March this year,” he has said,
“over 7,7 million of the poorest of the
poor received social grants; 10 years ago, only
2,6 million beneficiaries were recorded.”
In order to speed up registrations of births and
deaths, there are now 134 mobile Home Affairs
Offices set up next to Social Development offices,
and regular community outreach programmes target
residents in deep rural areas. Information for
the public about these efforts has been sent out
through newspapers, TV and radio broadcasts. Pamphlets
stating the new age limit (14 years old) to qualify
for child support grants, and the dates on which
this limit takes effect, are being distributed.
Thandanani Children’s Foundation (TCF)
is a registered Non-Profit Organisation working
in KZN to support and protect orphans and vulnerable
children. TCF has noted that because of home births
and HIV/AIDS in very poor communities, up to 50%
of South Africa’s children to do not have
birth certificates or identity books. These important
documents are needed throughout one’s life,
whether to apply for social grants, to enter the
education system, to prove South African citizenship,
to apply for a job, to get a driver’s licence,
or to vote during elections.
Those who do not have them are, socially speaking,
“invisible”. To address this crisis,
TCF is running a campaign called YOUR RIGHT from
March to December 2004, and is offering, free
to all, STEP-BY-STEP Guides in isiZulu, as well
as posters and brochures, describing how to obtain
a birth certificate and an ID-book. TCF will also
be running educational workshops in communities,
and publishing the guidelines in KZN’s The
Witness and Echo newspapers to spread this information
as far afield as possible.
If you wish to find out more and obtain free
information materials, make contact with any of
these partners in social support, by writing to
or calling them as follows:
ACESS:
PATRICIA MARTIN Tel (021) 761 4938
Office 1, Suite 1, Findlay and Tait House
Corner of Gabriel and Main Roads, Plumstead
7800
Dept of Social Development:
TOLL-FREE HELP-LINE = 0800 60 10 11
Thandanani Children’s Foundation:
EMMA MORTIMER
Tel: (033) 345 1879
Private Bag X9005, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal
3200
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