South Africa – A conversation on the future of a basic income grant with Neil Coleman, co-founder of the Institute for Economic Justice

Costs and Financing Neil Coleman (co-founder of the Institute for Economic Justice) On the question of the cost, which I know a lot of the participants here are interested in, there are multiple scenarios, and the actual cost depends on many things, including the value at which the grant is pegged; the numbers of people who qualify; means-testing and financing mechanisms; and the level of take up. [...] The party responses correspond to surveys which have been done, for example, by the University of Johannesburg which show that in the population, there is a support for the introduction of a basic income of over 60% and support for the increasing value of the SRD grant and its extension to more people. [...] The scorecard [in the presentation] looks at 19 parties and multiple different considerations, including the level of the basic income universality, the means test, elimination of exclusion errors, privacy, the level of the child support grant, etc. [...] This is very similar to the Minister of Social Development [Lindiwe Zulu], who's also in favor of the grant and a couple of others, both inside the ANC and also in various government departments, who speak quite a lot about the importance of the grant across multiple categories. [...] A lot of the resistance and opposition to the grant is seen as ideological, and I think that, as you say, the president is supportive of a basic income, and the ruling party is strongly supportive of it.