Social Protection, Community and Human Development Cluster

Questions and Answers:

Journalist: Minister Dlamini can you elaborate on your tweets that what happened during the 2015 SoNA were actions of a coup d'état by certain Members of Parliaments (MPs).

Minister Sisulu: the briefing is meant to be a government report back on what was said at SoNA and not on twitter.

Journalist: apart from social cohesion and the Africa Month mentioned in the statement and SoNA, arts and culture practitioners have criticised the fact that art has been omitted by the President. What is Minister Mthethwa’s response to that critique and how does art fit into the bigger picture of the SoNA?

Journalist: Minister Mthethwa, can you elaborate on the increase in incidence of prejudice and stereotypes in terms of social cohesion and nation building as you alluded to them in the statement.  Are you referring to the recent racist incidents seen in the country?

Journalist: since 2007, 16 000 SA flags have been installed in public institutions whereby the current plan is to install an additional 20 000 such flags.  Is the reason behind the increase the fact that social cohesion in the country seems to be in need of a boost.

Minister Mthethwa: in the SoNA the President first spoke about the arts, culture and heritage sector in terms of Nation building and social cohesion, where May 2015 is to be the month were all the genres and practitioners of arts, culture and heritage will be showcasing their work to the world; all of that is inclusive of art. 

The nation building project started in 1994 in SA so that the country can arrive at a non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous democracy.  In the process of arriving at that vision there certainly will be challenges such that the recent racist acts emerging across the country are not unique to SA. Even the most developed economies are still constructing non-racial communities: and therefore when elements like anti-foreigner sentiment which others call afrophobia surface in the country, it is important for society to raise its opposition and rejection of such intolerances.

The flags are part of this social cohesion and nation building project where the NDP states that by 2030, South Africans will be knowledgeable and will be behaving in a manner that is to unify the country further instead of dividing it. In that regard there has to be these unifying elements in society which include SAs National symbols, the National signs and the National Anthem. The Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) together with the Department of Communications (DOC) have agreed that when National programmes start, especially in digital media, the national anthem will be sung and played.  Citizens have to internalise these unifying principles over and above the DAC boosting social cohesion through installation of flags, as the process is to heal and take the nation forward.

Journalist: Minister Thulas Nxesi what are the timelines for the finalisation of the Expropriation Bill seeing that it is part of the Land Reform project in SA.

In terms of the rebuilding of previously poorly built houses; how far is the programme as the country is not certain of how many houses have been built thus far and how much has been recovered from the contractors which have built shoddy houses.

Journalist: Minister Dlamini can you expand on why there is a low uptake of the child social support grant. 

Journalist: the impression the media has been left with concerning Minister Dlamini’s tweets and the SoNA developments is that they are a matter of National Security. If indeed the developments are a matter of national security which then was tweeted about by the Minister in a public platform, a public response is required to the question whether Minister Dlamini believed the events at SoNA 2015 were amounted to a coup d'état.

Mr Legadima Leso, Chief Director: Cluster Communication: Social Sector & G & ,A requested journalists to get a one-on-one interview with the Ministers on all the issues which had not been covered in the media briefing statement.  

Minister Nxesi: the finalisation of the Expropriation Bill is an urgent matter as it is known that Government has embarked on a large infrastructure programme, and that from time to time the State will need to expropriate land in the interest of the public. The Bill has already been taken to National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) where all the social partners therein approved the draft before being tabled in Parliament.  The Department’s intention is to have Parliament pass the Bill before it rises at the end of 2015. 

Minister Sisulu: the DHS at Ministers and Members of Executive Councils Meeting (MinMEC) has concluded that it will need to redo the policy on rectification as it has been found that in the recent past, there has been a lot of deviation from what the policy was meant to be addressing. The DHS had a rectification programme to deal with houses that had been built before 1998, which is before the establishment of the National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC) which is responsible for ensuring that government housing is of good quality and standard. Thereafter the DHS did not anticipate that there would be any shoddily built houses thereafter as the NHBRC would ensure that such houses would be rectified at the constructor’s expense. However, in the Eastern Cape (EC) there has been great deviation in how the rectification instrument is supposed to be used. The province has also requested the DHS to also rectify houses that were been built before ’94 and as such the DHS is revisiting the policy so that it can be made public quite soon.

Minister Dlamini: the Children’s Fund has completed research which indicated that more than 2 million children are not part of the child grant system. The Department of Social Development (SD) then went around the country looking for these children using the Integrated Community Registration Outreach Programme (ICROP) programme, assuming that these missing children are mainly in rural areas.  After analysis, the DSD discovered that the children are actually at the periphery of urban areas, such as Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town. Thereafter, the DSD mobilised and went to these areas with an attendant concern that young women are currently having children so that they can access the child social grant. Moreover the DSD found that infants are mostly registered once they have only reached two years old.

Minister Motswaledi: during the DOH imbizos where it is enquiring about teenage pregnancies: many communities alluded to the child social grant as a driver of that phenomenon. However, if this is true infants will not be getting registered only at two years of age as all young women would rush to the DSD to register their infants immediately after giving birth. The United Nations Population Development study has pointed out what results in the high incidence of teenage pregnancy. In this regard the challenge is affecting all of sub-Saharan Africa where countries therein have inadvertently stopped facilitating the family planning programme in exchange for focusing on the HIV pandemic through teaching Abstain, Be faithful and Condomise (ABC) only.
Seeing that there are only posters on abortion in the streets now, the DOH has launched a big Family Planning programme, so as to replace abortion and further advocate dual protection.

 The briefing was adjourned.