Dr. Nqobile Zulu, Research Manager at the Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute joins eNCA for a discussion on the Mid-term budget cuts (MTBPS). The Studies in poverty and inequality institute is concerned that spending will have to be made from already tightened budgets across the board.

These cuts will wreak havoc on societies most vulnerable, being women, children, poor and elderly.

The minister alluded to much. More spending regarding the police and army, we are spending more money on defence, we are not in a war situation/ we should consider poverty and the high majority of the unemployed. This is not ideal

People are hungry, the army was going to townships to retrieve the goods taken during the July looting, they retrieved food items. We don’t need police services financed, we need our people fed.

People gathered to defend their malls from looters post July protest, people defended what they thought they own. The state should support livelihoods, the state is not hearing the community.

We are servicing so much debt, we need to keep servicing this debt in order to not fall behind. There is a misdirection, corruption needs to be sorted out by the state. 44.4% of people in our country are unemployed, a basic income grant can help to bring dignity to people’s livelihoods. Ideas that the Basic income grant will cause dependency and bad habits is unfair, we need to consider that the people who have already received this grant have made their own way to receive more money, they created businesses to support their livelihoods.

The lack of commitment in the SRoD grant is very disappointing because there are a lot of social issues that have been solved from the grant, women who are dependant on abusive men had an out with this. Now they are at risk again.

There are too many factors in the matter for us to say that it is black or white, the grey area is too large.

Source: eNCA