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Millions of South Africa’s children live in poverty and under conditions where their rights in the Constitution have not been realised. What is required from the African Union and the South African government is an outline to why South Africa has such high levels of child poverty, what child poverty is, and how it has been thought about.

There are two main reasons for the state of child poverty in South Africa. The first being the legacy of apartheid. Racially discriminatory policy has resulted in very high levels of inequality, with many of today’s black children inheriting the inequalities and omissions of the previous government. On the whole, schools, primary health care services and infrastructure are poor in historically black areas. In addition, large rural areas were declared homelands and subjected to systematic degradation, overcrowding and under-development. The poorest populations still live in these areas, where women and children are over-represented, and where there are huge backlogs in services and infrastructure. At the same time, the productive resources of the country, farms, factories and financial capital, continue to be in the hands of a mostly white minority. The BEE policies have somewhat impacted on the racial distribution of resources, but resource and asset distribution remain very similar to what they were at the beginning of the last decade.

The second reason for child poverty is the very high level of unemployment in the country. South Africa emerged from sanctions and a protected economy into the rush of globalisation in the early 1990s. It sought to make itself attractive to foreign investment and to expand trade by opening markets and reducing trade barriers. These approaches deepened the already high levels of unemployment as the country lost jobs in sectors that struggled to compete in the global market, such as the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.

Then of course there is a third element at play here that cannot be underestimated, the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Poor communities and households are most heavily affected by the spread of HIV/AIDS. Families living with this disease are likely to lose wage or self employment income if an earner gets sick, while having to spend large proportions of income on health care and funeral expenses. This situation, in turn, deepens poverty. Families in communities heavily burdened by HIV/AIDS are also likely to take in children and adults affected by the pandemic, which increases dependency on the limited income and assets of such households. Children in households affected by HIV/AIDS risk missing school, either to care for sick household members or to try and earn money to supplement the household income, thereby increasing the likelihood that poverty is perpetuated into their generation.

Almost everyone has an intuitive understanding of what child poverty is. A situation where children do not have enough resources to grow healthy and strong, to get an education, to live in a good and safe environment, and to fulfil their potential. Where children are deprived of the resources needed to grow and develop, they are living in poverty. In order to work out where resources should be allocated and to see how the poverty situation is changing over time, it is necessary to create some definition that will clearly distinguish between children who are poor and those who are not. Once poverty is defined, it needs to be measured regularly to quantify how many children are living in poverty, how deep the poverty is, and what areas of their lives are impoverished. Noble, Wright and Cluver outline the different ways in which child poverty can be thought about, measured and enumerated. They consider child poverty and its consequences as having both an intrinsic and instrumental value. Intrinsically, the experiences of children are important. Allowing children to live in poverty is not right. The instrumental value of child poverty is linked to the fact that children will grow up to be the adults of tomorrow. For this reason, a long-term investment of resources and care in the lives of children is essential for the future. When we think about poverty in this way, it is obvious that children and their caregivers need more than just money. A definition of child poverty should therefore include what children need. Yet, many definitions of poverty are based on income and expenditure in households because, in the society we live in, money gives power to purchase many of the things that are needed. Some of the ways in which poverty can be defined are discussed below.

The idea of absolute poverty is that there are basic goods needed by everyone for survival, no matter where or when they live. These basics are usually measured by calculating how much it would cost to buy or get what is needed for subsistence or survival. The resulting measure of child poverty counts how many children have access to less than the calculated amount, and this is expressed as the number of poor children, or the proportion of children, living in such circumstances. This is an absolute measure of poverty. As Noble and his co-authors note, most research into child poverty in South Africa has used this approach. The problem with absolute definitions of poverty is that, whilst they identify issues relating to subsistence, they do not address the wider inequalities in society, where poverty is one extreme on the spectrum of relative wealth.

A relative approach to conceptualising and measuring poverty takes the broader context in which children live seriously. Relative poverty measures do not only consider the absolute deprivation of resources necessary for survival, but also take into account inequality in a society. Some forms of relative income measures that are used in South Africa are problematic as they define people as being poor when they are located in the bottom 20% or 40% of income distribution. As some people will always be poorer than others, using a measure like this would mean that poverty could never be eliminated. In the international context, relative income poverty is more usually expressed as those living in households below half of average income, by using this measure, it is technically possible to eliminate poverty. However, there may be a danger with this approach if half of the average income is below subsistence level.

Poverty can be measured narrowly, through income alone, or in broader terms. A relative definition of poverty is most useful when it is considered in a multi-dimensional way. This means the focus moves to considering relative poverty as lacking the resources to participate fully in society across a number of dimensions. For example, it would be possible to take into account the extent of health deprivation, education deprivation, housing deprivation, employment deprivation, access to services deprivation, as well as income deprivation. It is possible to develop an absolute core concept of poverty in many areas of a child’s life, not only for family or household income. Abuse, a lack of access to education or health care, the use of unsafe water, a bucket toilet system, all of these are impoverishments. Many forms of social exclusion can also be included in a relative definition. Going on school outings, having a school uniform, and being able to celebrate birthdays can all be considered necessary for a child’s full inclusion into society.

Poverty remains one of South Africa’s greatest challenges, mainly because it is inherited. Today, the majority of South Africa’s children are living in households too poor to buy basic necessities. Unless the cycle is broken, generation after generation will continue to struggle without much hope of sharing in what
the country has to offer. In this second decade of democracy, combating poverty needs to be a priority of government, business, civil society, and indeed every individual. In South Africa, most children live in under-developed rural areas where there is a lack of access to services, infrastructure and opportunities. In this regard, poverty needs to be understood as multi-dimensional, and encompassing not only a lack of money or material resources, but also various other deprivations such as access to schooling, health care and a conducive living environment. Poverty impacts on children’s rights in a variety of ways. For South Africa’s children, poverty means growing up without sufficient and nutritious food, which impacts on health, growth and development. It means that many children live in inadequate or overcrowded housing. It means a lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation for nearly half of the country’s children, which also causes health problems. A lack of access to electricity adds further to health and safety hazards, as many families have to use paraffin or coal fires for cooking and heating. In addition, poverty for many of South Africa’s children means a long walk to reach school, often on an empty stomach.

These experiences of poverty are compounded by the HIV/AIDS pandemic which adversely affects families’ resources in many different ways. The agency and resilience of the millions of children and their caregivers who live in poverty in this time of HIV/AIDS is remarkable. There are many who triumph daily against extreme conditions and who are creative and purposeful in finding ways to survive and to celebrate family life. Indeed, in implementing a national response to this situation, the importance of strengthening and supporting families as the optimum place for children to grow and develop must not be lost.

Today, children are growing up within a progressive rights framework based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Chil. While recognising that much progress has been made by governments in the past decade, there are still many challenges to tackle to ensure that all children’s rights are realised. Children’s Institute play a key role in monitoring the realisation of children’s rights and informing the prioritisation of children’s well being by government decision-makers and civil society role-players There various measures that are crucial to the task of making children’s rights real. Among these are three that need to be emphasised. First: a national information system that can provide reliable and timely child-centred data, which is crucial to planning, is an imperative. Second: collaboration between all government departments that impact on child well-being is required to ensure integrated development and service delivery. And third: applying the principle of the ‘best interest of the child’ in all decisions that affect children’s lives. The realisation of children’s rights is not only up to the government and dedicated role-players whether as individuals or as players in our various sectors, we can all work toward putting the best interests of children first. It is imperative that these various interventions, however big or small, allow children to share in the wealth of their countries, and to get the rights they are entitled to.

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