Africa: Dear Mr President – to Succeed, South Africa Needs an Excellent Social Development Minister

The department can no longer be treated as peripheral – its new minister must have empathy and a deep knowledge of social welfare.

Dear President Cyril Ramaphosa

When a child is raped, neglected or abused and needs somewhere safe to go; when a woman and her children flee domestic violence in the middle of the night; when a rape survivor needs trauma support and help preparing for court, or an elderly person no longer has anyone to care for them – that is when the Department of Social Development (DSD) is needed most.

These are also the moments that define a caring, accountable state.

Yet the DSD is a shadow of what it should be. Provincial failures have been so severe that children have gone hungry and frontline staff have gone unpaid for months. Former minister Sisisi Tolashe was fired on 14 May amid mounting accusations of corruption, maladministration and misuse of public funds. Those are serious allegations. But equally troubling is the poor leadership and dysfunction in the department she headed.

You may wonder why this should concern a government whose core objectives – as set out in the Medium-Term Development Framework – are economic growth, job creation and a capable state. The answer is that without a functioning DSD, none of those objectives can be met.

A country where violence against children and families is endemic cannot build the social connectedness, educational achievement or long-term economic productivity that sustained growth requires. Prevention, protection and care are not peripheral welfare spending – they are economic infrastructure.

The evidence is unambiguous. The Birth to Thirty longitudinal study has tracked three generations of children born in post-apartheid South Africa. It shows that 90% of children have experienced several types of violence by the time they are 18.

It also shows that children who experience multiple forms of adversity – violence at home, at school and in their communities – are significantly more likely to depend on social grants, less likely to find employment and more likely to suffer poor physical and mental health.

Without addressing the social roots of violence and supporting families in crisis, we will perpetually be intervening too late. This means that the many opportunities the state creates for young people to be employed do not have the intended impact.

Institute for Security Studies research into the life histories of men who committed multiple violent crimes found that they had, as children, experienced abuse, neglect and violence – and no one had noticed or intervened. They became wards of the state, held in violent and costly prisons at immense cost to themselves, their families and society.

This is the systemic consequence of broken referral chains between schools, hospitals, police and courts – a problem that DSD should prevent. This is why it is not a peripheral department.

Social workers are the essential link in the chain between these service providers. They place children at risk in safe houses, assess children ahead of testimony in court, ensure shelters are adequately resourced and respond to violence in schools.

The National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide places prevention, early intervention and victim support at the centre of the national response. That is because violence against women and children is rooted in family breakdown, trauma and social inequality. Without a functional DSD, the criminal justice system cannot do its job.

The department cannot meet its mandate alone. It is estimated that around 90% of social welfare services in South Africa are delivered by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on behalf of the state. These organisations intervene in domestic violence, support rape survivors and provide after-school care and shelter for those with nowhere else to go. The state depends on them heavily, yet funding is consistently inadequate and unpredictable.

A critical failure of the department has been not implementing the Sector Funding Policy, which exists precisely to ensure fair, sustainable and predictable funding for social welfare services. Implementing it must be a first-order priority for the next minister.

Mr President, the person you appoint will inherit a department demoralised by years of poor and absent leadership. Their first task should be to rekindle energy and commitment – to listen to officials, empower them and rebuild institutional confidence. We, as civil society actors deeply committed to this country’s future, stand ready to support such a minister and the department.

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