Post COVID-19 patterns of social protection spending and poverty alleviation in South Africa

Abstract

It is with no doubt that social protection has been a key weapon for development in most low-income countries. As part of its commitment, South Africa has implemented and continued with additional measures, such as Social Relief Distress (SRD), since the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the major concerns hovers around the long-term sustainability of fiscal allocations to this obligation. This paper, therefore, analyses patterns of social protection spending using STAR (Situation, task, action, results) method on year on year (YoY) data (2019/202 and 2020/21). Firstly, the paper shows that the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to already existing extreme poverty levels and people’s vulnerability. The study exposes a need to assess the long run sustainability of the fiscal commitment to poverty reduction and the protection of the vulnerable. Secondly, it demonstrates that post -COVID -19 fiscal commitments to poverty reduction. The study compares and analyses year-on year data of fiscal allocation to social protection, the number of beneficiaries and poverty rates and further forecast prospects of sustainability. Social protection improved during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, improving the number of beneficiaries. However, this was realised through borrowing and costly fiscal trade-offs. This paper provides alternative measures that can be implemented to create a fiscal space and finance the social protection gap