Gears in shift.

For South Africa, the struggle is far from over. The country has gone through three and a half centuries of struggle for political freedom and social justice, and nearly half a century of struggle against apartheid - an obnoxious doctrine of racial separation and oppression. With the demise of apartheid in 1994 and the establishment of a new democratic South Africa, the struggle for economic and social justice has taken on new vigour. Expectations and aspirations have been raised to phenomenal levels by the introduction of the new political order.

On 21 August 1997, South African civil organizations, in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), declared war on poverty, stressing that in the post-apartheid era the country's most important priorities and greatest challenges were poverty eradication and redressing of inequalities. "We dedicate ourselves to concrete actions and real commitments to create a world in which humankind can live in peace and justice, and to declare war on poverty and inequality that it may be eradicated from our land", said the Declaration, endorsed by the Government of South Africa as a framework for national mobilization and action to combat poverty and deprivation.

The country's new constitution, adopted in May 1996, also entrenched the poor's fundamental socio-economic rights, long denied them under apartheid, such as the right to gain access to basic needs - adequate housing, basic health care, education, nutrition, clean water, and the right to family and parental care for young children, among others - elevating them to equal status as the rights to political freedom and citizenship. In addition, the Constitution has put in place powerful safeguard instruments, principally the Human Rights and Gender Equality Commissions to monitor national performance relating to the promotion and protection of those rights among all South Africans.

South Africa is a vast country occupying the southern extremity of the African continent. It has a land area of 470,689 square miles (1,219,080 square km.) and a population of 37.9 million, according to the 1996 census. It is also a land of extremes and contrasts, where the legacies of apartheid still run deep. Ostentatious wealth, grinding poverty and extreme inequalities in South Africa exist side by side.

Poverty and inequality are widespread and manifest themselves in high rates of unemployment, extreme land hunger and lack of access by the overwhelming majority of the population to basic human needs. In both urban and rural areas, South Africa's majority population continues to experience conditions of severe deprivation and squalor.

Fifty-three per cent of South Africa's population lives under absolute poverty (below a nationally defined poverty line) and the country's illiteracy rate is 65 per cent. Endemic poverty is strongly characterized by race, geographical area, gender and age dimensions. Ninety-five per cent of the poor are black Africans, with 75 per cent of them residing in rural areas, especially in the provinces incorporating the former homelands. Nearly 87 per cent of the land, a crucial asset for the rural people, is in the hands of 10 per cent of the population, while 90 per cent of the people occupy only 13 per cent of the national territory. Unemployment among the youth aged 18 to 24 years runs as high as 40 per cent, and the joblessness is further aggravated by the demobilization of soldiers from the former armies that fought both in defense of and against the apartheid system.

Women, children, the elderly and those with disabilities bear the brunt of poverty. Female-headed households, for example, have a 50-per cent higher poverty rate than those headed by males, while some 61 per cent of all children live in poverty - for African children, it is even worse, with more than 70 per cent of them. An estimated 2 million to 3 million South Africans are malnourished, including 87 per cent of African children under the age of 12 years. As a result, more than 45 per cent of the poor in South Africa are children under the age of 16 years. Between 40 and 50 per cent of the absolutely poor households comprise those out of the labour market - the elderly and people with illnesses or disabilities who depended on pensions and remittances as the primary sources of livelihood. Even the poor who work earn less than one tenth of the country's richer top 20 per cent of the households.

The spatial distribution of poverty in South Africa is highly concentrated, with more than two thirds of the poor found in 3 of the 9 provinces, namely, the Eastern Cape, KaZulu/Natal and Northern Province. The Eastern Cape and Northern Province have by far the highest poverty rates of 78 and 77 per cent, respectively. The high rates of poverty in the three provinces is closely linked to their incorporation of the ten poverty-stricken former homelands created during apartheid. Of those homeland entities, Transkei, Qwa-Qwa and Lebowa were the poorest reserves of cheap labour during apartheid, with poverty rates respectively of 92, 88 and 83 per cent. The vast majority of the poor in these areas are women and children left behind by urban migrant male workers.

Thus, measures in terms of the Human Development Index - published by UNDP as the composite index of per capita income, life expectancy and educational attainment - South Africa is basically a poor country. It ranks 90th of 175 countries, trailing behind countries like Chile, Malaysia, Mauritius, Brazil, Algeria, among others. However, the human development levels for white South Africans are higher and compare favourably with more developed, middle income countries like Cyprus and Barbados. For black South Africans, human development levels fall to the 125th position below those of Botswana, Indonesia, Egypt and Swaziland.

Having emerged as a new democratic, non-racial society, South Africa is now preoccupied with the twin challenges of alleviating poverty and achieving equitable development. The Government has addressed these problems principally through two policy instruments: the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) and the Growth, Employment and Redistribution: A Macro-Economic Strategy (GEARS). The RDP was launched in 1995 to provide a broad policy framework for the post-apartheid development. Its aims were to democratize the State, build the country through peace and security and begin to attack structures of poverty and unemployment, and redress inequalities through reconstruction and development. The RDP focused primarily on programmes to meet the basic needs of South Africans, develop human resources and skills development, build the economy and democratize the State operations and society at large.

The GEARS strategy is, in many respects, an extension of the RDP programmes of rebuilding and restructuring the economy to meet long-term challenges of creating employment, redistributing incomes and opportunities in favour of the poor, ensuring universal social services, as well as creating safety and productivity. The Government has embarked on social transformation to redress the stark imbalances between national wealth and human development - imbalances which are structurally underpinned by endemic poverty and inequality. In addition, there has been an increased social activism by both the Government and civil society on the issues of poverty.

On 22 October 1996, the national Parliament devoted a debate exclusively to poverty within the framework of the recommendations of the 1995 World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen. In October 1997, in observance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (17 October), South Africans engaged in a nationwide debate on poverty in their provincial legislatures, summits, workshops and other outreach activities to promote increased awareness and popular participation in anti-poverty efforts.

South Africa still has a long distance to traverse on the transformation front, but the vision, the will and resources are there to move the process forward. Poverty is not just about the income poor. It is about the people's lost creativity and potential to contribute to society. It is about the denial of access to opportunities and choices to lead a decent life, achieve a better standard of living, more freedom, dignity and self-respect - things that matter most for human existence. The first five post-apartheid years have not maximized these opportunities and choices, but the next ten years should begin to make a difference in the quality of life of the country's majority.