Since the announcements of the eight Millennium Development Goals in the year 2000, there have been many successes and failures related to the goals in South Africa.
Below is the list of the MDG’s successes and failures in SA:
Information compiled by UNDP. Available on their website: http://www.za.undp.org/content/south_africa/en/home/mdgoverview/overview/mdg8/
Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty
Using national estimates of poverty and inequality in South Africa, in 2000, 11% of people were living on less than US$1 a day and 34% were living on less than US$ 2 a day.
Using expenditure share measures (i.e. the proportion of expenditure for each quintile of households in South Africa, between 1995 and 2000), in 2000 the poorest 20% accounted for 2.8% of total expenditure.
In contrast, the wealthiest 20% of households accounted for 64.5% of all expenditure in 2000. Income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, in South Africa was at 0.59 when social transfers are excluded.
It declines to 0.35 when including social transfers. There are many on-going programmes and new ones that are aimed at improving the profile of South Africans.
Social assistance grants increased from R10 billion in 1994 to R37.1 billion in 2004 with beneficiaries growing from 2.6 million to 7.9 million during the same period.
The proportion of households with access to clean water increased from 60% in 1995 to 85% in 2003 and by December 2004 10 million people had access to clean water.
Access to sanitation increased from 49% of households in 1994 to 63% in 2003 while 2.4 million housing subsidies were approved and 1.74 million housing units were built between April 1994 and March 2005.
According to the 2010 report, absolute poverty has declined, based on a period of economic growth combined with a series of redistributive measures carried out by the government of the day.
Most notable, is the five-fold increase in the number of people benefiting from social grants. An additional area of importance, not captured by the above measures of income inequality, is a variety of pro-poor investments in services such as sanitation, housing and others. Challenges, however, remain in South Africa.
These range from a persistently unequal society, although with scope for accelerating declines in absolute poverty specifically for a proportion of the population, living under $2.50 a day.
Further attention needs to be paid to malnutrition and child health and the problem of unemployment as a long-term solution that would potentially replace social assistance programmes. In this regard the following recommendations are appropriate.
Achieve universal primary education
Primary education in South Africa is characterised by very high rates of enrollment and retention. These rates show strong gender equity, and where small differences do exist, they are in the girl child’s favour.
Universal primary education is already effectively a reality. The adjusted net enrollment ratios show that primary education is hovering on 98% by 2009 up from 96% in 2002. At this level almost the same proportion of boys of school going- age and similarly that for girls are in school.
Completion rates of primary education have also improved from 89.6% in 2002 to 93.8% in 2009. These completion rates are also accompanied by improving literacy rates that reach 93%.
South Africa has in effect achieved the goal of universal primary education before the year 2015, and its education system can now be recognised as having attained near universal access.
However, if this achievement is to be translated into educational transformation in
a meaningful way, serious interventions are needed to improve the quality and functionality of education.
This is especially required within the historically black and chronically underperforming section of South Africa’s schooling system. In this regard, government is currently scaling up already existing initiatives and developing new ones.
Successive post-apartheid administrations are aware of the challenges and put in place a battery of initiatives to improve and strengthen the quality of basic education with the current government.
Promote gender equality and empower women
The factors that have facilitated South Africa’s improved performance towards gender equality include the African National Congress’s quota in respect of political representation of women, as well as a widespread recognition since 1994 that South Africa has an obligation to address gender inequalities alongside those relating to race.
This recognition is firmly grounded in the Constitution and reflected in a wide range of laws, policies, programmes and practices.
The constitutional mandate on gender equality is clear, and the legislative process is providing the building blocks for a gender equitable society. Eliminating violence is essential for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women.
The existing target, to eliminate the gender disparity in education, captures only one, albeit a key, dimension of gender inequality. Eliminating violence against women is a prerequisite for gender equality and empowerment of women.
The follow-up by mothers and fathers on school and extracurricular activities of their children reinforces the family ties, favours socialisation at home and reduces the risk of violence and/or aggression in the streets.
It is clear that South Africa has reached most gender equality targets, if not exceeded them. South Africa’s performance has also improved for several of the indicators over the period.
A more serious challenge relates to other socio-economic concerns where women continue to have higher rate of unemployment than men, their share of non-agricultural wage remains below 50%, and a greater prevalence of violence against women.
Reduce child mortality
South Africa has done extremely well since the turn of the century in increasing the proportion of 1 year-old children immunised against measles, and the general immunisation coverage of infants (under one year of age).
Projecting current trends, both of these initiatives will reach their respective MDGs by 2015. In addition, trends show a decrease from 2001 to 2008 in the number of children with low birth weight (a weight less than 60% of their estimated ‘normal’ weight for their age).
From a policy perspective South Africa has been proactive in ensuring that the necessary policies and implementation strategies are in place to reduce under-five mortality in the form of prevention of malnutrition and intensification of immunisation coverage, as well as access to free health care facilities.
However, while the interventions in health are strong and hold promise for stabilising infant mortality, they are not sufficient to reduce under-five mortality rates.
Consequently evidence point to near doubling of under-five mortality rate in a space of nine years and a constant, albeit at a high plateaux, infant mortality rate over a six year period. The target set for South Africa of 20 deaths per thousand live births or lower by 2015 compares adversely with the current level of 104.
Improve maternal health
Despite this investment in public health there is a high and increasing level of maternal mortality in South Africa. Notwithstanding the fact that over 90% of pregnant women currently have access to antenatal care, and the fact that with a contraceptive prevalence of over 60%, South Africa has relatively high contraceptive prevalence rate.
Of concern remains the current level of maternal mortality ratio which is far higher than the 2015 MDG 5 target of 38 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
It is evident that maternal mortality is both a multi-dimensional health and broader developmental challenge, and that improved sexual and reproductive health is also dependent on a range of other factors including education, decent work, safety, clean water and sanitation, and adequate transport facilities.
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Government has intensified the implementation of policies, strategies and programmes aimed at combating HIV and AIDS. However, there is wide recognition that the Government cannot be expected to combat the spread of HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases (including TB) without broad-based support from all sectors of South Africa.
Given the complexity of the health challenges required to address these problems there is a need for ongoing concerted efforts by Government, civil society, the private sector and individuals to work in a collaborative and integrated manner.
Individuals also need to take responsibility for combating the spread of HIV and AIDS and TB by minimizing risky sexual behaviour that fuels infection and the spread of the conditions. HIV prevalence levels are still high in South Africa in comparison to other countries in Northern, Western and Middle Africa.
However, it would appear that the prevalence of HIV may have stabilized in the country. With regard to Malaria, the national malaria programme will be redirected towards malaria elimination and the Department of Health will work with countries like Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana to ensure that this is achieved.
HIV prevalence levels are still high in South Africa compared to other countries in Northern, Western and Middle Africa. However, it would appear that the prevalence of HIV has stabilized in the country.
Encouraging as the decline might be, the differential infection rates point to predominance in rural provinces attributed to gender power relations.
Even more worrisome are the emergent relationships that expose young girls to HIV because of gender power inequalities with older male sexual partners.
Ensure environmental sustainability
Since 1994, environmental issues have moved into the socio-political arena. They bring together human rights, access to natural resources, social justice, equity and sustainability. In the last eleven years, Government has focused on prioritising people’s needs while safeguarding the country’s natural assets.
The range of legislative, policy and institutional developments that have occurred over this period have brought about a new environmental management approach, based on recognition of the contribution that the country’s biological resources in relation to food security, science, the economy, cultural integrity and well-being make.
Also, between April 1994 and March 2005, approximately 2,4 million housing subsidies were approved. During the same period, 1,74 million housing units were built.
Two important messages from a review of goal 7 are as follows. South Africa does have significant environmental challenges, specifically its dependence on environmentally harmful coal based energy production.
Second, it clear that there have been significant improvements in improving to basic services and this must be assessed in relation to Goal 1. No strategy for environmental sustainability can be successful without better monitoring.
Currently, however, monitoring systems for water flows and quality, air quality, deforestation, and other land degradation are inadequate. Sustained investments in strengthening environmental monitoring systems will thus be essential.
An important mechanism for implementing national strategies is the set of multilateral environmental agreements and conventions, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, the RAMSAR Wetland Convention, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. More funding and targeted technical support need to be made available to implement these agreements.
Develop a global partnership for development
In 2004, the South African Government undertook to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014, in its Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative (Asgisa).
To meet its Asgisa targets, the Government estimated that the level of economic growth would need to average 4.5% or higher during the period 2005 to 2009, and 6% or higher during the period 2010 through 2014.
So far, on a real basis the economy has grown at an average annual rate of 3.2% between 2005 and 2009, and thus Asgisa growth targets have not been met.
In relation to strengthening global partnerships, South Africa has rapidly opened up trade, especially to LDCs and developing countries.
Her trade and in particular imports from both LDCs and developing countries have increased, with the LDC share of imports rising from less than 1% in 2002 to just under 6% in 2008 (before falling to 4% in 2009), while imports from developing countries increased to a high of 47% in 2009.
South Africa is seen as a country characterised by a remarkably stable macro-economic framework. Its major challenge is to increase its economic growth potential.
Failure to do so, will limit its ability to address many of the goals set out by the MDG process, major amongst them, the creation of jobs, drastic improvements in the quality of especially technical education, and reversal of the necessary to date, but rapidly ballooning social assistance programme.
South Africa has made great progress in telecommunications for the masses. The percentage of South Africans with access to a cell phone is rapidly approaching 9 out of 10..
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