On August 26 2016, in the small mountain village of Agu located in China’s northern province of Gansu, a 28-year-old mother named Yang Gailan killed her four children and then took her own life by ingesting agricultural chemicals.
The family, comprising of the Yang, her husband, their four children, Yang’s mother and grandmother, lived in conditions that were not fit for human habitation.
Their mud house was sparsely furnished, exposing them to ecological dangers in a region of China that’s prone to natural disasters.
The Gailan family was extremely poor and it was likely going to be their fate for generations to come.
This is because the Gailan children were not attending school and thus, had little to no chance to escape poverty.
The reason the children couldn’t attend school was due to problems with their hukou — China’s household registration system through which identification documents are provided.
Because the children didn’t have their hukou, they couldn’t be registered in any schools.
The poor conditions of the family were worsened by a recent decision to cancel their welfare.
The welfare, similar to social grants in SA, is allocated to indigent households in dire straights and for a while, had helped alleviate poverty in the Gailan household.
It is reported that over the years, the welfare system had become marred in corruption and nepotism, with villagers that were close to government officials being prioritised as recipients while indigent households suffered.
Just eight days after Yang killed her children and took her own life, her husband, grief-stricken by what had occurred, also took his life.
Like his wife, he ingested agricultural chemicals.
In just a week, six of the eight inhabitants of the house in Agu had perished. It was a devastating case.
When the story broke out in mainstream Chinese media, the opinions of society were divided.
Some people, posing a moral argument, condemned Yang for killing her children, arguing that she was a monster for doing something so heinous.
Others argued that the deaths were the result of corruption in the welfare system.
There were also many who raised the issue that the death of members of the Gailan family was a symbol of the rural poverty that still continues in China — often hidden from the world as a way of cementing the narrative that since 1980, the Chinese government has lifted 800-million people out of poverty.
It’s a narrative that critics of the Communist regime have always challenged, contending that it was dishonest as millions of Chinese, many in rural areas, are still living in abject poverty in a China of extreme inequalities.
A week ago, social development minister Lindiwe Zulu gave a briefing about audit outcomes of her department to parliament’s portfolio committee on social development.
The minister said the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) funded 27.3-million beneficiaries, 18.8-million of whom were recipients of social grants.
A further 8.5-million are receiving social relief of distress (SRD) grants that were instituted in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The news was met with anger by many South Africans who argued that the fiscus was under too much pressure, with economists positing that the country was heading for a serious crisis due to the unsustainable increase in debt to fund the growing fiscal deficit.
The country has only 7.1-million taxpayers, a majority of whom earn below R20,000 a month.
In this anger, there have been arguments that social grants must be ceased altogether, with some going as far as to claim that these grants are enablers of “laziness” and encourage women to have more children.
None of these arguments are scientific. Scholarly research including a 2021 World Bank report titled “Social Assistance Programs and Systems Review: SA” demonstrate that social grants alleviate poverty and hunger, and improve outcomes for indigent families.
While they do not significantly reduce inequalities, they are an important instrument in mitigating against poverty.
While there has to be a move from the system of social transfers towards sustainable and productive investment in people, removing social grants will hurl millions into poverty.
It will put their backs against the wall — not too different to what it did to Yang Gailan.
No society can truly prosper when the poorest of its people can’t be helped.
HeraldLIVE