Why a basic income grant would doom poor South Africans to perpetual poverty

Social grants can only be a bridge to a better future — they cannot be the future.

My mother lives in a small farming town in the eastern Free State called Clocolan. It’s there that I came face to face with poverty in SA.

My mother once remarked that in her church they had funerals every weekend, but very few, if any, weddings. Most young people in Clocolan don’t finish school, can barely read for meaning, have children early, never hold a job, live off child support grants, and look forward to migrating to old-age grants — if they live that long. The pipeline from birth to death is bereft of milestones of progress. It’s just drudgery, hardship and slog…