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CAPE TOWN – The SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) has defended itself after President Thabo Mbeki launched a tirade against it on Friday for making “the startling claim” that more South Africans are now poorer than they were in 1996.
Writing in his weekly online newsletter, Mbeki said the truth would prevail, and the pernicious tendency to falsify reality to advance the particular agendas of forces opposed to the movement and national democratic revolution had to be opposed.
The SAIRR’s claim was “yet another canard in the making”.
Mbeki cited figures from the Development Indicators Mid-Term Review published by the Presidency in June, and quoted from StatsSA to counter the SAIRR survey.
Among other things, he said the SAIRR relied on a definition of poverty that was radically different from the one spelt out in the RDP and described by StatsSA, and had ignored information from certain sources.
“Necessarily, this produces a distortion of our reality which amounts to a falsification of this reality.”
Mbeki also accused the SAIRR of positioning itself “as the liberal alternative to our movement”.
In a statement later on Friday -- under the heading “the truth has prevailed” -- the SAIRR said recent data from the President’s own office did, however, show an increase in the number of people living in poverty.
Regarding the charge of falsifying reality, the institute said the SA Survey it published used several different definitions and sources of poverty.
On the measure of less than a dollar a day, the data published by the institute found that the number of people living at this level of poverty increased from 1.9 million in 1996 to 4.2 million a decade later.
Other measures of poverty used in the survey included people living on R871 a month.
Various living standard measures, income, and expenditure measures were also reported.
“On the second charge that the notion that poverty has doubled is absurd, it is a simple reflection of the fact that the number of unemployed South Africans have doubled from 2.0 million to 4.2 million since 1996.
“This is reported in the same survey and almost exactly mirrors the increase in poverty figures.
“The President implies that other measures of poverty besides simple financial poverty need to be taken into account. The institute’s survey does this in great detail.”
The survey recorded large numerical increases in the number of households with access to various services.
The success of this roll-out had been widely publicised by the institute, which was one of few organisations to go on record that service delivery had been successful.
Regarding Mbeki’s charge that the SAIRR ignored data in the Mid-Term Review, the institute said it had, in fact, in September, published that data in its monthly Fast Facts publication.
“While the President is correct that this shows a fall in the proportion of people living in poverty from 50.1 percent in 1993 to 43.2 percent in 2006, the actual numbers, however, show that the number of people living in poverty have gone up from 18.9 million people to 20.5 million people.
“This is significantly more than the 4.2 million people living in poverty which is the figure that the President disputes.”
Mbeki was correct in observing that average incomes had increased since 1994.
This had largely been driven by sound economic growth and the prudent liberal fiscal and economic policies of his government.
However, not everyone had benefited equally from this growth. The high levels of unemployment had left a large proportion of South Africans unable to participate in the growing economy.
“Among that underclass poverty levels remain high.”
According to the institute’s survey, that level of poverty had reached its peak in 2002 and since declined, because levels of unemployment stabilised and began to decline over the same period.
The roll-out of social grants was another contributing factor to the decline.
“Despite the post 2002 decline, levels of poverty measured at less than a dollar a day remain twice as high as they were ten years ago,” the SAIRR said. –Sapa
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