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Daily Maverick
6 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Constitutional rights for children: An urgent call for early childhood development in South Africa
The right to development must be understood holistically and is a legal entitlement rooted in international law. Access to early learning, nutrition, healthcare, responsive caregiving, safety, social services and play are not optional services, but are entitlements that enable children to survive, thrive, and participate fully in society. South Africa cannot claim to uphold children's rights while the foundations for early childhood development (ECD) — the most critical phase of human development — remain legally invisible. Despite a growing budget and increased political support, the country's youngest six million citizens will continue to be deprioritised without a justiciable right to ECD. This was the challenge a powerful group of legal minds and ECD champions confronted head-on at the Right to ECD Symposium hosted by the Real Reform for ECD movement in Johannesburg. The Symposium brought together ECD practitioners, law and policy experts, and seasoned ECD advocates in a powerful show of collective commitment to one goal: confronting the legal vacuum at the heart of ECD delivery. The keynote address by Associate Professor Noam Peleg, an expert on children's rights and development, grounded the discussions in international law. He urged South Africans to rethink the legal framing of childhood. He argued that children should not be seen merely as future adults but as full rights-holders in the present. He called for the full recognition of the right to development, from zero to 18 years as understood in international law, with ECD recognised as a critical foundation for the realisation of that right. Peleg's core message was that the right to development must be understood holistically and is a legal entitlement rooted in international law. Access to early learning, nutrition, healthcare, responsive caregiving, safety, social services and play are not optional services, but are entitlements that enable children to survive, thrive, and participate fully in society. No enforceable right to ECD While South Africa's Constitution protects several of these elements individually, there is no express unified and enforceable right to ECD. Further, the absence of a legally binding, cross-sectoral legislative framework weakens accountability and undermines coordination on service delivery. Roles remain poorly defined across departments, responsibilities shift without consequence, and systemic failures are often left unchallenged unless civil society steps in to advocate. These are not theoretical concerns but have urgent real world impacts. Despite the welcome political shift by the government to significantly increase the ECD budget to more than R10-billion, the allocation remains inadequate to achieve universal access. Moreover, without legal and regulatory reform, policy commitments concerning universal access will not be achieved. Presenting a proposed framework for constitutionalising the right to early childhood development, Nurina Ally (Director of the Centre for Law and Society at the University of Cape Town) and Tatiana Kazim (Research Associate at the Centre for Law and Society) argued that the South African Constitution, interpreted in light of international law, implicitly includes an umbrella right to early childhood development, holistically understood, as well as a number of component rights (the spokes of the umbrella): rights to early learning; adequate nutrition; good health; responsive caregiving; rest, leisure and play; and opportunities to participate in cultural life. Both the umbrella right and each of the components, or spokes, also entail corresponding duties on the part of the state, families, and service providers. Importantly, the overarching umbrella right entails duties of coordination and funding on the part of the various government departments implicated in ECD service delivery, such as the departments of Basic Education, Health, and Social Development. However, a constitutional right to ECD has not yet been widely recognised in South Africa, either in civil society, the courts, or in the government. The failure to recognise such a right is evident in existing legislation and policies, and has serious consequences for the ECD sector and for young children. Legal clarity is necessary for enforcement as well as accountability. Consequences of legal gaps The consequences of the legal gaps are felt throughout early childhood development services. Among many other issues, departments work in silos, children between birth and two are neglected, parents are inadequately supported, nutrition support is inadequate, and health policies do not speak to the National Integrated ECD Policy. Many ECD programmes are locked out of public funding due to outdated planning laws, inflexible infrastructure norms, burdensome registration requirements, and the lack of a qualified and well-trained ECD workforce. While incremental reforms — such as amending the Children's Act, revising municipal bylaws, and easing regulatory requirements — are necessary, they are insufficient. While we strongly support these reforms and call for the Department of Basic Education to table the Children's Amendment Bill in Parliament this year, we also urge it to commit to a longer-term law reform strategy, as outlined in its own ECD 2030 Strategy. What we need is a bold shift: recognition that the Constitution protects an umbrella right to early childhood development, which encompasses the full essential package of ECD services. Crucially, this right is enforceable by the people it affects: the children, families and communities who rely on it. The Right to ECD Symposium was a beginning. It marked the start of a new phase in the movement for legal recognition of ECD as a right, not just a policy objective. Real change requires more than political will, it requires a legal framework that is principled, enforceable, and grounded in the lived realities of children in South Africa. The time for fragmented approaches has passed. The right to ECD must be recognised, resourced, and protected by law. DM Nobukhosi Zulu-Taruza is the Law and Policy Specialist at Ilifa Labantwana. Tess Peacock is the Executive Director at the Equality Collective. Nurina Ally is the Director of the Centre for Law and Society and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape Town. Cameron McConnachie is the co-lead of the Legal Resources Centre's Education Programme. Peter Daniel Al-Naddaf is a Legal Researcher at Equal Education Law Centre. Mmatsetshweu Ruby Motaung is the Executive Director of TREE (Training and Resources in Early Education).
Daily Maverick
20-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Maverick
Historic early childhood development investments threatened as Budget withdrawal sparks fears of lost progress
The evidence is clear. Quality early learning programmes deliver a 13% annual return on investment through improved health, education, and employment outcomes. Scaling up ECD would create 300,000 jobs and 70,000 new enterprises, primarily in township and rural communities. Investing in ECD isn't just a moral imperative; it is an economic strategy. In a dramatic turn of events, the Government of National Unity (GNU) has withdrawn the 2025/2026 National Budget, following deep divisions over the proposed VAT increase. As South Africa prepares for a new Budget to be tabled on 21 May 2025, uncertainty looms. For the early childhood development (ECD) sector, the stakes couldn't be higher. For the first time in South Africa's history, the government proposed a historic R10-billion allocation to expand the ECD subsidy, a R210-million increase for ECD infrastructure, and R336-million to extend nutrition support to our youngest citizens. It was a moment that made the sector feel seen, valued, and finally recognised not just in policy, but in practice. But now, with the Budget withdrawn once again, this progress hangs in the balance. The smartest investment South Africa can make The evidence is clear. As Nobel Prize winner James Heckman's work has shown, quality early learning programmes deliver a 13% annual return on investment through improved health, education, and employment outcomes. The Department of Basic Education's (DBE) own 2030 ECD Strategy shows that scaling up ECD would create 300,000 jobs and 70,000 new enterprises, primarily in township and rural communities. Investing in ECD isn't just a moral imperative; it is an economic strategy. ECD investment directly contributes to the GNU's own priorities: driving inclusive growth, reducing poverty, and building a developmental state. Ilifa Labantwana modelling shows that increased ECD funding could: Reduce malnutrition and child poverty. Improve the working conditions of 250,000 largely female ECD workers. Relieve care burdens for more than two million caregivers, unlocking economic participation. Stimulate township and rural economies through infrastructure and programme expenditure. 'This investment would enable us to retain qualified practitioners, maintain resources, and support families through holistic programmes,' said Refilwe Mkhoe from Lusemanzi ECD Centre in Orange Farm. The cost of neglect is far greater Failing to protect this funding now means continuing a generational cycle of poverty. One in four children under five in South Africa is stunted. More than 1.3 million children aged three to five are not in any early learning programme. Most ECD practitioners, many of whom are black women, earn below the minimum wage. Agnes Ramosela, the principal at Tsepiso's Kiddies World Preschool in Lenasia South, said: 'We are not even able to pay ourselves minimum wage. I am currently employing 20 people, mostly young people struggling with employment, and I am sometimes unable to pay them.' Progressive alternatives exist We acknowledge that the removal of the proposed VAT increase has created new fiscal pressures. However, austerity cannot, and must not, come at the expense of young children. Even with our last rand, there is no wiser or more transformative investment than ECD. Rather than cutting these important services, the government must pursue a more sustainable revenue strategy. The Budget Justice Coalition (BJC) has proposed progressive and equitable alternatives to raise revenue without placing additional burdens on poor people. These include implementing a net wealth tax, tackling corporate tax base erosion and profit shifting, reversing unnecessary corporate tax cuts and rebalancing the tax mix, expanding the taxation of luxury goods, among others. The South African Revenue Service has also suggested investment in improving compliance and collection efficiency as a revenue generating mechanism. These measures align with our Constitution's call for equity and social justice, and they can support sustainable investment in key services like ECD. The time is now We call on the GNU to protect, not reverse, the R10-billion subsidy expansion, the R210-million infrastructure investment, and the R336-million increased nutrition support. These are not optional line items. They are the building blocks of a thriving nation. In March this year, at the ECD Leadership Summit, President Cyril Ramaphosa issued a heartfelt apology, saying: 'it was a mistake not to invest in ECD 30 years ago'. He is right. And now, we have a second chance. We urge all political parties in the GNU, and Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana, to keep young children at the centre of South Africa's development agenda. ECD must remain a non-negotiable. DM Tshepo Mantjé is the Right to ECD Coordinator at Equality Collective and the Real Reform for ECD Movement Coordinator. Daniel McLaren is a Public Finance Economist at Ilifa Labantwana. Hopolang Selebalo is Head of Policy and Research at SmartStart South Africa and Chairperson of the Real Reform for ECD Steering Committee.
Daily Maverick
04-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
A tale of two dams — Grasslands restoration is as important as engineering solutions to ensure SA's future water security
In his State of the Nation Address, President Ramaphosa boasted of the preparations to build the Ntabelanga Dam in the Eastern Cape. However, this R10-billion construction will quickly go to waste if the grasslands above it aren't repaired, and catchment restoration is dead in the water after government funding cuts and stagnant tendering processes. From a bird's eye view, this bank on the Tina River in the Eastern Cape highlands looks like it's suffering a failed hair transplant. The satellite photos capture row upon row of round plugs in neat symmetry in the ochre ground. Some have a faint shadow where grass has sprouted. Most are the leftover contours of hand-dug ponds, each not much wider than the diameter of a car tyre, which were sunk into the cement-hard ground in the hope that they'd become islands of plant growth that would allow the veld to recover. If the grass regrows and stabilises the riverbank, it should slow the flood of topsoil and sand that has clogged up the Mount Fletcher weir, a small downstream reservoir that cost R900-million to build, but now can only hold a third of its intended capacity. The weir has become something of a personality in conservation circles, but for all the wrong reasons. Just four years after a low, scalloped wall was built across an elbow of the Tina River in 2014 on the outskirts of a town that shared its name — today, the town falls under Tlokoeng — the weir had lost roughly two-thirds of its holding capacity. The upstream grassland is so threadbare from overgrazing that the soil had been scoured away by rain and dumped into the belly of the reservoir. Just 50km from here is the site of the proposed Ntabelanga Dam, a R10-billion project that has been on the cards for a decade and which was a talking point in President Cyril Ramaphosa's State of the Nation Address this February. Natural resource managers inside government, as well as conservationists with civil society organisations, warn that if the grasslands in the dam's catchment aren't repaired, this costly investment will face the same plight as the Mount Fletcher weir. Back in 2014, the department's chief director of the then Department of Environmental Affairs' Natural Resource Management Programmes, Dr Christo Marias calculated that for just 5% of the total cost of the project – which covers the building of the dam, a water treatment plant and the bulk water distribution network – spent over a 12 year period, these grasslands can be stabilised enough to keep the Ntabelanga Dam relatively silt-free. That amounts to R532-million in total, or around R44-million a year. But government funding for wetland and grassland restoration, including the clearing of invasive alien plants under the Working for Water and related ecosystem restoration projects, has been throttled so dramatically that it has brought restoration work here in the Eastern Cape and in many other parts of the country to an indefinite halt. The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) attributes this to the response by its then-minister, Barbara Creecy, to post-Covid budget cuts by the Treasury, which hit all departments hard. But people close to the DFFE say a shift in spending priorities is to blame, along with a change in 2015 to an onerous and slow tender process for distributing funds. The abandoned riverbank repair job upstream of the Mount Fletcher weir was among the victims, as were the many people who were paid to wield shovels as part of the restoration work. Rob Scholz is known in these parts as the guy who mends broken wetlands. It's a miserable Eastern Cape day in February, and he's explaining why the municipality was paying locals to dig 40,000-odd pint-sized ponds in the banks of the Tina River, and how these might help the riverbank recover. '(Rain) just runs off (hard soil). You get hardly any absorption of water. With that ponding you're making little water traps.' Each pond can hold about 25l of water. Even if a pond is only half-filled during a storm, a catchment with 40,000 such indentations can store half a million litres of water, allowing it to seep slowly into the soil rather than flashing off the top and stripping away anything unmoored in its path. Over time, they become islands which hold moisture and in which plants germinate and take root. 'It was actually amazing. Within a year, some of those areas grassed up.' The before-and-after photographs bear up. The recovery at some sites where the teams worked is objectively quite remarkable. Scholz is interrupted by his phone. Someone wants advice on what kind of animal feed to buy. A trained forester, Scholz worked in the natural resource management office at the Joe Gqabi District Municipality (JGDM) for 24 years and was unit manager when he and his team lost their jobs in 2024. Now, Scholz works for a local agri-business operation based in Ugie and Nqanqarhu. The municipality's funding for the Tina River work came mostly from the pool of money aimed at ecosystem restoration work, the Working for Water and related projects that fall under the DFFE's budget for environmental programmes. But in 2015 the state changed how it distributes these funds, from a grant system, to one that requires municipalities to tender for funds alongside private contractors. The red tape proved to be onerous and the processing so slow that funding often came through too late in a financial year to allow the clearing and restoration work to be done on time. The uncertainty made planning difficult. By 2020, tender processing slowed and then ground to a halt. Scholz and acting municipal manager Fiona Sephton went as far as to travel to Cape Town to get some clarity from the DFFE on their applications. Meanwhile, the municipality was fast running out of money to keep its natural resource management office and its contractors afloat. To date, no tenders have been issued for Working for Water (WfW) projects in the Eastern Cape for two years. The post-Covid cash crunch also saw the Treasury cut budgets dramatically across all departments. Creecy's response within the DFFE resulted in the WfW's pot reduced from R1.7-billion in the 2020/21 financial year, to just R377-million in 2024. The department confirmed these figures, saying it reflected Creecy's response to general funding cuts at the time. Although the department's own figures suggest that the cuts to WfW were a shift in priorities rather than a shortage of cash. The total spend for the department's environmental programmes, under which WfW sits, remains relatively constant since then – R2.6-billion for 2020/21 and 2021/22; R3.2-billion for 2022/23; and R2.9-billion for 2023/24 — even while WfW has seen a 78% decrease on the previous budget. Several sources outside the department who are close to its senior structures, as well as staff inside the department, say this was a political decision reflecting changing priorities rather than a shortage of funding. The DFFE did not respond to specific questions relating to this decision. Either way, these events proved the death knell for the district municipality's grasslands repair work – which was positioned as job creation and economic development, not water catchment management since this isn't a municipal mandate – money for the team's salaries was gone, as were the funds to pay contracting teams drawn from the Tlokoeng community who did the heavily lifting in the restoration work along the Tina River. With no fixed contract, Scholz left his job of nearly 25 years at the municipality 'with nothing', not even a retrenchment package. 'It's one of those things,' he says pragmatically. Others are far worse off. 'We had about 850 to 900 people working in these programmes [across the wider district].' By his estimation, the district municipality is probably the second-biggest employer in the area, after the local private forestry company, PG Bison. There isn't much work for people in the town of Tlokoeng, formerly known as Mount Fletcher. Most families are dependent on social grants, so the Tina River restoration work was a boon when it happened, says Chief Montoeli Lehana of the Batlokoa Traditional Council. He was the main liaison between the Tlokoeng community and the JGDM for the Tina River work, and is understated when he says how 'sad' it was when the money dried up. 'It employed about 30 contractors, and each contractor employed plus-minus 20 people,' he says. The principal of the local high school even commented on how pupils were arriving at school with food in their stomachs when these jobs were in play. 'It was sad when we heard that there's no more budget for that project. Imagine, the number of people who suddenly had to stop [working] because there was no budget. The explanation was not enough.' There's no indication from the new environment minister, Dr Dion George, who took the helm of DFFE in July 2024, whether he will revisit the spending decisions for ecosystem restoration nationally, or grasslands rehabilitation here in the catchments of the Mount Fletcher weir or the proposed Ntabelanga Dam. But whatever shuffling of funds happens in budgetary spreadsheets in the DFFE's national office has real-world consequences for the future of water catchments of the Eastern Cape and the food that families can put on the table in obscure rural towns like Tlokoeng that are far from the corridors of power. DM This is part of the Golden Threads series for the Story Ark – tales from southern Africa's climate tipping points project, which investigates the state of the country's old-growth grasslands, the free natural services they offer and what South Africa needs to do to conserve and repair them. The series is a collaboration with the Stellenbosch University School for Climate Studies and the Henry Nxumalo Foundation, which supports investigative journalism.
