Poverty In South Africa
Poverty is the oldest and the most resistant virus that brings about a devastating disease in the third world or developing countries (Tazoacha, 2001). It’s rate of killing cannot be compared to any disease from the genesis of mankind. It is worse than malaria and HIV/AIDS which are claimed to be the highest killer diseases (Tazoacha, 2001), and even worse than EBOLA.
Despite the renewed commitment over the past 15 years and more to poverty reduction as the core objective of international development discourses and policies, progress to this end remains disappointing (UNDP, 2003). This is particularly evident in the extent to which the world is off track to achieve most of the Millennium Development Goals, globally and in most regions and countries (UNDP, 2003).
This inadequate progress raises important questions about the policies and strategies that have been adopted to achieve poverty reduction, as well as about key international issues including aid, debt and trade.South Africa has the richest natural resources and yet it is poor and stagnant in growth and development. In other words, in spite of all the wealthy resources including human and material in its possession, South Africa is the world’s poorest continent.
The Concept and Definition of Poverty
The word “poverty” and / or “poor” originated from the Latin word pauper meaning poor, which has its roots in the words pau- and pario that is “giving birth to nothing”; referring to unproductive livestock and farmland (Westover, 2008). Historically, the idea that some people are trapped in poverty while others have spells in poverty was a central element of most analysis (Hulme and Mckay, 2005). For example, officials and social commentators in eighteenth century France distinguished between the pauvre and the indigent.
The former experienced seasonal poverty when crops failed or demand for casual agricultural labour was low. The latter were permanently poor because of ill health (physical and mental), accident, age or alcoholism. The central aim of policy was to support the pauvre ways that would stop them from becoming indigent (Hulme and Mckay, 2005).In contemporary times this durational aspect of poverty has been relatively neglected and conceptual development, and more particularly measurement, has focused on severity/depth and multidimensionality.
This has been especially the case in economies where serious work on duration only began to emerge in the late 1980s (Gaiha 1993). An implicit assumption of much research was that the persistence of poverty at the individual and household level was highly correlated with the severity of poverty. During the early 1990s such work began to proliferate based on available panel data sets, and in 2000 the first collection of papers on this topic was published (Baulch and Hoddinnott 2000).
There are many definitions of poverty, according to how it is viewed. Encyclopaedia Encarta, defines poverty as the condition of having insufficient resources or income. In its most extreme form, poverty is a lack of basic human needs to sustain as useful and working efficiency such as adequate and nutritious food, clothing, housing, clean water and health services. According to the United Nations Human Development Report, (1998), poverty is defined as a complex phenomenon that generally refers to inadequacy of resources and deprivation of choices that would enable people to enjoy decent living conditions. Yunus (1994) on the other hand defines it as the denial of human rights relating to the fulfillment of basic human needs.
What Causes Poverty In South Africa?
Poverty has multiple and complex causes. SIDA (2005) views these multi-dimensional causes as stemming from a lack of information, knowledge about market prices for the goods they deal in, issues related to health, availability of public services, and their rights. There is a political minority which lacks the visibility and voice as regards the institutions that shape their lives. Poor people are also said to lack access to relevant skills and knowledge, education and personal development that could improve their livelihoods.
According to South Africa Poverty Reduction Strategy (2004), Poverty may be caused or exacerbated by:
The lack of capacity of the poor to influence social processes, public policy choices and resource allocations.
Low capacities through lack of education, vocational skills, entrepreneurial abilities, poor health and poor
quality of life.
The disadvantaged position of women in society.
Exposure to risks through lack of financial, social or physical security.
Low levels of consumption through lack of access to capital, social assets, land and market opportunities.
Exposure to shocks due to limited use of technology to stem effects of drought, floods, army worms, crop pests, crop diseases, and environmental degradation.
Inadequate environmental protection measures.
Lack of macro-economic stability that erodes the resources of the poor through inflation and other variables.
The inability of the national economy to optimise benefits within the global system.
Habits and conventions based upon superstition and myths giving rise to anti-social behaviour.
Other factors leading to vulnerability and exclusion.
Cultural And Structural Causes
Causes of poverty have also been categorised as cultural or structural.
Yahie (1993) believes that the factors that cause poverty include:
(i) structural causes that are more permanent and depend on a host of exogenous factors such as limited resources, lack of skills, locational disadvantage and other factors that are inherent in the social and political set-up; and
(ii) the transitional causes that are mainly due to structural adjustment reforms and changes in domestic economic policies that may result in price changes, unemployment and so on. Natural calamities such as drought and man-made disasters such as wars, environmental degradation and so on also induce transitional poverty ( Narayan et.al. 2000a, 2000b).
According to Glazer (2000), culture tends to be the explanatory variable that theorists and policymakers look to when attempting to explain social dysfunction, particularly due to the sometimes visible connection between culture and race. This may be why cultural arguments waned from the discussion and why some theorists and policymakers came to link poverty to behaviour (Mead, 1986), or to rational calculation (Murray 1984). These scholars argue that poverty is largely the result of social and behavioural deficiencies in individuals that ostensibly make them less economically viable within conventional society. However, due to persistence of poverty in certain areas, the behavioural perspective is reinforced by the culture of poverty thesis, which suggests that individuals create, sustain, and transmit to future generations a culture that reinforces the various social and behavioural deficiencies (Rodgers, 2000). A corollary to this perspective suggests that government policy perpetuates poverty, and contributes to a variety of other socials ills including rising rates of divorce (Murray, 1984).
