Minister Lindiwe Zulu: Social Development Dept Budget Vote 2022/23

• Published date: 13 May 2022
• Publication title: South African Official News

National Assembly Honourable Chairperson of the National Assembly; Chairperson and Members of the Portfolio Committee on Social Development;

Deputy Minister of Social Development;

MECs for Social Development here present;

Distinguished Guests; Fellow South Africans;

Members of the Media; and Ladies and Gentlemen.

Thank you for the opportunity to present the 2022/23 Budget Vote 19 of the Department of Social Development to this Honourable House. In the past two years, our people and institutions have been on the frontlines of a series of novel challenges and disasters such as COVID-19, the July 2021 unrests and, lately, the floods in the KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape provinces. Throughout this time we held together as a society and formed defences with which we are protecting and improving our people's lives and livelihoods. Informed by the need to improve the state of the collective of our people, their families and communities throughout our country, the Social Development portfolio is entering a period of great shift wherein our visibility, responsiveness and relevance will be aligned with the people's felt needs.

As the Social Development portfolio, we are saying: We are entering this era of great shift by remaking ourselves because the future of each South African is greater than the past we come from, and together with all South Africans we are going to make tomorrow worth living for. Working together with our provincial departments of Social Development, the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) and the National Development Agency (NDA), and corresponding with President Cyril Ramaphosa's State of the Nation Address (SoNA), throughout this financial year, the Department of Social Development will intentionally intensify its contributions towards interventions that address the impact of poverty, inequality and unemployment through:

1. continuously improving the implementation, quality, and reach of all Social Development services for each South African and towards the realisation of a society-wide impact;

2. strengthening our fight against gender-based violence and femicide by means of implementing the National Strategic Plan on Gender Based Violence and Femicide, in particular pillar 4;

3. the establishment of beneficial and sustainable linkages between the implementation of Social Development services and economic opportunities, particularly through creating and supporting the participation of beneficiaries in the social economy;

4. continuing with the implementation of the COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant;

5. ensuring that our programme implementation embodies the protection and furtherance of the dignity of our people;

6. leading the formation of community-targeted and strong people-public-private civil-academic-multilateral partnerships and social compacting in areas such as tackling gangsterism, substance abuse, gender-based violence, and the impact of disasters, shocks and emergencies;

7. expanding our support for food- and nutrition-provision interventions in pursuit of ending the pain of hunger as well as undoing the effects of malnutrition;

8. implementing Social Development programmes through the Cabinet-adopted District Development Model;

9. strengthening government's coordination and implementation mechanisms across the three spheres in service of the people; and

10. stabilising and strengthening institutional governance and capacity towards meaningful programme implementation throughout the Social Development portfolio. In light of the sustained conflict in Europe, not only is the cost of basic food items...