{"id":241266,"date":"2022-10-27T13:08:15","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T11:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/government-has-forgotten-the-july-unrest-you-cant-have-millions-of-people-going-hungry\/"},"modified":"2022-10-27T13:08:15","modified_gmt":"2022-10-27T11:08:15","slug":"government-has-forgotten-the-july-unrest-you-cant-have-millions-of-people-going-hungry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/government-has-forgotten-the-july-unrest-you-cant-have-millions-of-people-going-hungry\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cGovernment has forgotten the July unrest. You can\u2019t have millions of people going hungry.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/marecia_damons\/budget_picket.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"warn_big\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/government-has-forgotten-the-july-unrest-you-cant-have-millions-of-people-going-hungry.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">More than 60 people affiliated to several civil society and grassroots organisations picketed at the gates of Parliament on Wednesday ahead of Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana\u2019s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement. Photo: Marecia Damons<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Civil society groups have welcomed the extension of the R350 grant but believe it\u2019s not enough to make a meaningful impact in the lives of millions of unemployed people.<\/li>\n<li>This follows Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana\u2019s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) at the City Hall on Wednesday.<\/li>\n<li>Godongwana said the biggest allocations of the budget are directed to the education, health and social development sectors.<\/li>\n<li>He said the country\u2019s economy is expected to grow at an average of 1.6% per year for the next three years.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/government-has-forgotten-the-july-unrest-you-cant-have-millions-of-people-going-hungry.gif\" width=\"1\">Civil society groups have welcomed the extension of the R350 grant but believe it\u2019s not enough to make a meaningful impact in the lives of millions of unemployed people. This follows Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana\u2019s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) at the City Hall in Cape Town.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/r350-a-month-grant-extended-until-march-2024\/\">extending the Social Relief of Distress<\/a> (SRD) Grant until March 2024, Godongwana announced bailouts for state-owned entities (SOEs). He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.za\/speeches\/minister-enoch-godongwana-medium-term-budget-policy-statement-26-oct-2022-0000\">said<\/a> that the country\u2019s economy is expected to grow at an average of 1.6% over the next three years. \u201cOver the next three years, spending increases will be prioritised to improve investment in infrastructure and boost the budgets for safety, security and fighting corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More than 60 people affiliated with the Back2Work Campaign, the Peoples\u2019 Health Movement, Movement for Change and Social Justice Delegates, gathered outside Parliament ahead of the budget speech to discuss issues related to unemployment, public health, municipal services, and gender-based violence.<\/p>\n<p>Picketers held up placards reading: \u201cImprove public health\u201d, \u201cNo to budget cuts\u201d, \u201cStop privatisation of our energy and transport\u201d and \u201cWe demand decent work now\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>In response to the MTBPS, Reginald Mapempeni, secretary of the Back2Work campaign, said, \u201cWhile we appreciate the R350 SRD grant, there are problems with it because everybody who is supposed to receive it does not get it. And there are so many hiccups before you can benefit from the grant. They don\u2019t make it easy for people to apply and enjoy the grant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Langa resident Luvo Nabe, who joined picketers, said Godongwana\u2019s budget was full of \u201cempty promises\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe mentioned nothing about the Basic Income Grant, only the SRD grant, which a lot of people don\u2019t even get,\u201d said Nabe. He also said he wanted work with the Expanded Public Works Programmes to last more than three to six months.<\/p>\n<p>Madoda Cuphe of the Back2Work Campaign said, \u201cThere\u2019s 13 million people who want to work but cannot. Where does [Godongwana] think these people are getting money to sustain their families? Every unemployed person needs to be given a Basic Income Grant of R1,500.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGovernment keeps saying they can\u2019t afford it. But government has forgotten the July unrest. You can\u2019t have millions of people going hungry. If something doesn\u2019t change, the situation is going to become dire,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Godongwana also said that spending on building new and rehabilitating existing infrastructure will increase from R66.7-billion to R112.5-billion in 2025\/26. This includes roads, bridges, storm-water systems and public buildings.<\/p>\n<p>He said the largest allocations go to education, health and social development sectors. But Nowhi Mdayi, chair of the People\u2019s Health Movement, said communities are sceptical that they will see improvements on the ground. \u201cIn Gugulethu, clinics are the same size that they were in 1972. These facilities not only provide services to the Gugulethu community but also to surrounding areas. We need intervention,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/government-has-forgotten-the-july-unrest-you-cant-have-millions-of-people-going-hungry.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than 60 people affiliated to several civil society and grassroots organisations picketed at the gates of Parliament on Wednesday ahead of Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana\u2019s Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement. Photo: Marecia Damons Civil society groups have welcomed the extension of the R350 grant but believe it\u2019s not enough to make a meaningful impact in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":241267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-241266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/government-has-forgotten-the-july-unrest-you-cant-have-millions-of-people-going-hungry.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}