African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa said the R350 COVID grant has set the stage for the introduction of a basic income grant.
Ramaphosa said this at the Sandton Convention Centre on Saturday where the ANC deliberated with analysts, academics and the media to review their 2019 election manifesto.
For a long time, the ruling party has spoken about the universal basic income grant as one of its policies, it has not been able to get it off the ground.
The President added that the smooth implementation of the R350 unemployment grant suggests that government is capable of rolling out an income grant of a similar nature.
“That immediately exploded us on a new policy trajectory. We have extended it over time and now we have to countenance the issue of introducing a basic income grant, obviously within what we can afford.”
Adding his voice, Executive director at the Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute (SPII) Isobel Frye said there’s a basic income grant in South Africa will tend to over 11 million unemployed people who are incapable of finding jobs.
“The point is when people use the grant to make a small amounts income because of the means test they lost the grant, so when you use the grant to make money you get penalised instead if it was universal and Sars [South African Revenue Service] was used to claw back from people who don’t need it, we don’t run that risk of disincentivising people. It’s not the grant that creates dependency it is the means test and the targeting.”