Lowering the cost of food, and universal health coverage: inside the DA's social grants plan

The DA has launched a social development policy campaign to provide basic services and make social grants go further.

The party said it wants to increase the child support grant and extend the age cap above 18, lower the cost of food and create a national plan to tackle homelessness in South Africa.

The DA said without a national policy, there is now no fair distribution of funds across provinces to address homelessness. The party also proposes to increase safe spaces for children at risk of abuse, violence or risky activities. 

The DA said the ANC had plundered the fiscus over the past three decades.

“Millions of the most vulnerable South Africans are now at severe risk of losing their grants because of a party that puts itself before its citizens,” it said. 

“While social grants and other forms of social welfare are never an adequate substitute for economic growth and job creation, they play a vital role in protecting the most vulnerable in society from extreme poverty.”

Some of the key interventions the DA proposes:

• Increase the child support grant at the same level of the official food poverty line from R500 to R624
• Ensure the elderly are financially stable in their retirement through introducing automatic enrolment of employees in pension schemes, who can choose to opt out of the scheme
• Consider empowering the unemployed with cash transfers for basic services
• Lower the cost of food
• Ensure the poor have access to quality basic healthcare services through universal health coverage
• Reduce teenage pregnancy by providing increased access to sex education and contraception methods in high schools
• Develop and implement fatherhood programmes with NGOs and community centres that provide family and children services and initiatives
• Create a national plan to tackle homelessness in South Africa
• Ensure survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) can easily access aid, such as health care, legal assistance, shelter and essential items such as dignity kits
• Increase safe spaces for children

“Social grants are a constitutional right and any suggestion that the DA would take them away if elected into national government is patently false and misleading,” the party added. 

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