In its July 25, 2004 edition, the "Sunday Times" told its readers that it had made the startling discovery that "provinces (and) municipalities (have been) told to pay for (the expanded) public-works programme out of (their) own pockets." It reported that this is what the President said at the last meeting of the Presidential Coordinating Council (PCC) held earlier in July.
Accordingly, its report appeared under the dramatic headline - "Mbeki passes the buck on job creation." The "Sunday Times" thought that this matter so important that it decided to publish an Editorial on the issue, under the supposedly clever and sarcastic title - "Shrinking meaning of 'expanded' ".
So certain was the newspaper of the correctness of its discovery that in its Editorial it said: "Unless Mbeki is able to show he is allocating new resources to job creation, the unemployed will have to live with the fact that they were the useful idiots of the April election. For the moment, 'expanded' means 'more of the same'."
In the same Editorial, the newspaper correctly reported that, "The ruling party specifically stated the following objective in its election manifesto: 'Create one million job opportunities through the Expanded Public Works Programme.' The Editorial went on to say, "This played no small part in reassuring the poor that they remained on the ruling party's agenda."
But, clearly, the "Sunday Times" has come to the conclusion that the Expanded Public Works Programme died even before it was born. It is convinced that the Programme lived only in the deceitful election rhetoric of the ANC. As a vigilant "watchdog", it has taken on the responsibility to convince its readers that the Programme is nothing more than a very cruel ANC election hoax, aimed at deceiving the poor.
The newspaper is entirely correct in its assessment that the poor of our country have been reassured - by more than the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) - that they remain central to the agenda of the ANC. It is entirely wrong in its discovery that no additional funds have been set aside for the EPWP, and therefore that the poor were "the useful idiots of the April election."
It is quite easy to demonstrate this, which we will do. Merely setting the record straight would not merit an entire "Letter from the President". But there are three important issues illustrated by the "Sunday Times" article and Editorial on which we wish to comment. These are:
In his February Budget Speech, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said: "Over the medium term, provinces and municipalities will prioritise labour-based infrastructure projects as part of Government's Expanded Public Works Programme. Over the next five years, R15 billion will be channelled to this intervention in part through the provincial infrastructure and municipal infrastructure grants. Together, these grants receive additional allocations of R3,2 billion over the MTEF, which will be partially earmarked for labour-based public works. Work opportunities will also be created in environmental programmes and in social development initiatives."
The 2004 National Budget Review says: "Strong growth in non-social services expenditure of 8 per cent over the next three years, will provide a significant boost to Government's efforts to address unemployment through the labour-based Expanded Public Works Programme and create economic opportunities across provinces.Payments for capital assets are budgeted to grow from R10,5 billion in 2003/4 to R11,6 billion in 2004/5 and to R13,8 billion by 2006/7."
The Budget Review also says: "National transfers to municipalities supplement own revenue to enable them to fulfil their developmental roles. The key local government priorities are the expansion and provision of free basic services (etc).(and) the creation of jobs through the Expanded Public Works Programme.Over the next three years, municipalities will receive an additional R3,9 billion."
Commenting on the EPWP, the Review said:
"The programme aims to provide employment opportunities and training to at least one million targeted unemployed people in its first five years. Work opportunities will be created in the following ways:
It continued:
"Funds for EPWP programmes will be allocated to national departments, provinces and municipalities through the normal budgeting process.
"SECTOR ALLOCATIONS 2004/5 - 2008/9
Infrastructure R15 billion.
"Environmental and cultural R 4 billion.
"Social, at least R 600 million.
"Economic, still to be determined."
All this information about additional resources, and not "more of the same", is contained in published documents. And as we have said, in addition, Parliament has already approved the 2004/5 Budget. Similarly, the Provincial Budgets have also been approved by the Provincial legislatures.
Contrary to and despite all this, the "Sunday Times" article made the bold statement that, "President Thabo Mbeki has told a meeting of premiers and mayors that there was no new money to co-finance the government's ambitious R15-billion Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP)."
It is difficult to understand why the "Sunday Times" did not undertake the simple exercise of determining whether the National Budget provided the additional resources we had promised, and whether these had been transferred to the Provinces and Municipalities.
Instead, it invented the fiction that, on behalf of the national government, we had "told the provincial governments to re-order their existing budgets to come up with R15-billion for its 'expanded' public works programme." From this entirely false premise, it concluded that, "For the moment, 'expanded' means 'more of the same'."
It also chose to believe an unnamed "official who (allegedly) attended the PCC meeting, (who) said while they knew there would be no new money to finance EPWP, provinces, local governments and voters expected additional resources for the 'extended' part of the programme. He said municipalities and provinces were now being asked to fulfil the ANC's election promises." In fairness, we must presume that this ill-informed "official" actually exists, and actually spoke to the "Sunday Times".
The 2004 Budget Review also says:
"Since 2001/02, there has been a steady decline in the revenue share going to national government, with a concomitant increase in the shares of provincial and local government; this trend continues over the 2004 MTEF. By 2006/07, transfers to provinces will constitute 58,0 per cent and local government 4,6 per cent of allocated non-interest expenditure."
In his Budget Speech, Minister Manuel elaborated further on this, saying: "Provinces and local government are the primary delivery channels for basic services and will receive R30,2 billion of the total R44,5 billion allocated over and above the 2003 budget forward estimates (for basic services)."
Specifically with reference to the EPWP, Public Works Minister, Stella Sigcau explained in June, during her Departmental Budget Vote, and before the July meeting of the PCC, that, "The EPWP is mainstreamed on the budgets of departments, provinces, municipalities and State Owned Enterprises. The large-scale labour-intensive provincial and municipal infrastructure programme involves ring-fencing fifteen billion Rands (R15 billion) of the conditional infrastructure (transfers) to provinces and municipalities."
The simple fact of the matter is that "provinces and local government are the primary delivery channels for basic services". For this reason, "there has been a steady decline in the revenue share going to national government." For these reasons, the funds for the EPWP have not been put on the budget of the Department of Public Works, but on the budgets of "the primary delivery channels for basic services", the provincial and municipal governments.
Strangely, the "Sunday Times" concludes that when the provincial and municipal governments are reminded of this reality, this constitutes telling these governments "to re-order their existing budgets", since, according to the article in the newspaper, "national government would not fork out additional money."
Further to this, the Budget Review says: "The 9 provinces and 284 municipalities. are empowered to take resource allocation decisions within the context of broad medium-term priorities of government that are agreed through consultative processes in intergovernmental forums such as the Budget Council, Budget Forum, sectoral MinMECs, joint MinMECs and extended Cabinet meetings, in which provinces are represented by Premiers and local government by the chairperson of the South African Local Government Association."
If the "Sunday Times" had taken the little and undemanding trouble it needs to understand how government works, it would have found out that:
As the ANC and other parties conducted their 2004 election campaigns, they were aware of the allocations for the EPWP contained in the 2004/5 Budget, as well as the MTEF projections. This is for the simple reason that the Budget and the related documents were presented to Parliament on February 18th, almost two months before the April 14th election date.
Accordingly, what the ANC promised the poor of our country was based on available funds, provided for in the Budget whose details the "Sunday Times" reported when Minister Manuel presented this Budget.
The budgeted availability of these funds meant and means that the ANC had and has no intention whatsoever that "(provincial and municipal) money will be taken from Peter to pay Paul", and that "provincial governments (should) shuffle the budgetary deck chairs.(quashing the) hope that new money will be allocated to the (EPWP)," as the "Sunday Times" Editorial alleges.
The very fact that throughout the election campaign, and since, the opposition parties did not alight upon, and make a big song and dance about the startling discoveries it has made, should have warned the "Sunday Times" that there was something odd and fishy about its discoveries.
The strange and false discoveries of the "Sunday Times" with regard to the EPWP raise a number of serious concerns.
One of these relates to the quality of journalism in our country. The sorry tale told by the "Sunday Times" handling of the EPWP issue points to the reality of a serious national problem. Questions must necessarily arise about the extent to which we, and the general public, can rely on the media as a source of objective information, on which we should base our actions.
Another relates to the extent to which "political correspondents" actually understand the most basic elements of South African and other political reality and practice. This must be considered together with the peculiar notion that seems to be prevalent in some circles, that media independence must necessarily translate into a consistent effort to find fault with, and criticise the government and the ruling party, at all costs.
The third of these concerns arises directly from the obvious certainty on the part of the "Sunday Times" that the ANC ran a fraudulent election campaign, based on the brazen propagation of a big lie. This indicates that there are some within a media that proudly proclaims that it is committed to "objective, truthful, unbiased and balanced" reporting, whose fundamental assumptions about the ANC are far removed from what would qualify to be described as objective, truthful, unbiased and balanced.
The "Sunday Times" Editorial says, correctly, "After achieving a substantial majority, Mbeki said: 'The ANC has a duty.to do all of the things it has said it will do."
Indeed, the ANC will do all the things it has said it will do. This includes the provision of the resources required for the successful implementation of the EPWP. We can only hope and pray that the "Sunday Times" will report progress and problems in this regard, and with regard to other programmes, in an objective, truthful, unbiased and balanced manner, and make editorial comments based on such objective, truthful, unbiased and balanced reporting.
In October 2003, "Le Monde Diplomatique" published an article by Ignacio Ramonet entitled "Set the media free", in which he discussed the media globally.
He wrote: "As people are now beginning to realise, news is contaminated. It poisons our minds, pollutes our brains, manipulates us, intoxicates us, and tries to instil into our subconscious ideas that are not our own. This is why we now need to establish an ecology of news, to sort real news from a flood of lies. The enormity of the situation was apparent in the invasion of Iraq. We need to decontaminate our news."
Hopefully the situation will not arise in future when, as seems to happen so regularly with regard to negative social phenomena, somebody will claim a place for us as the global leader among the purveyors of contaminated news.
