As South Africa prepares to commemorate Human Rights Day tomorrow, the country is reminded of what it is to have rights, and why we need a day to ensure all citizens have equal status.
Despite approaching 30 years of democracy, the country still lags in providing equal access to basic services. While many think of these in terms of electricity and water, essential equal rights in the spotlight at present are the right to a bank account, and the right to trade. Discrimination – racial and gender bias – in the financial sector are also talking points for Human Rights Day that play into the unfair practices of the banking and financial sector.
The Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) has raised concerns about the unabated exclusion of previously disadvantaged women from even basic financial and human capital – which has kept them languishing at the periphery of the country’s economy.
Commentators on the subject agree that economic and financial exclusion is a violation of human rights as it perpetuates inequality. However, they also point out that the country’s major banks cannot be entirely blamed because their primary mandate is not to uplift the poor, but to service their own targeted section of the country’s financially engaged society.
Yet something must be done.
CGE spokesperson Sello Molekwa said his organisation has repeatedly pleaded for the development of financial institutions that would lower requirements for disadvantaged people, so they can access finance and start their own small businesses.
Molekwa said CGE was more concerned about vulnerable women operating in the informal sector “because we see them as community builders and prospective job creators”. On top of being discriminated against because of their race, Molekwa said even if women enter the professional sphere, they still experience difficulties.
“We believe that women have not received the economic empowerment they need to overcome their challenges. Finance institutions and industry regulators should do more to assist and empower women who own small businesses,” he said.
Women’s participation in the economy is essential to growing GDP, with the World Economic Forum (WEF) predicting, as far back as 2019, that providing access to financial resources for women entrepreneurs globally could increase the world’s GDP by more than USD12 trillion by 2025. And Africa, as a developing economy, is primed to be a significant contributor.
Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who pioneered the concepts of microfinance and microcredit in Bangladesh, is on record as saying: “Poverty denies people any semblance of control over their destiny, it is the ultimate denial of human rights. The accepted human rights are food, shelter, health and education, and the basic responsibility of a society is to make sure that an environment exists so that people can have these things.
“The big financial institutions currently ignore almost two-thirds of the world’s population. So I say the right to credit should have the topmost priority on the list of human rights.”
In South Africa, we sit with an additional challenge – because even if one has a bank account, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to keep it. As the Sekunjalo Group and others are currently experiencing.
Sekunjalo and 43 others have challenged South Africa’s banking cartel in the Equality Court on grounds of discrimination as well as restricting their right to trade, among other claims.
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.” However, without access to banking facilities and finance – whether rich or poor – there is little to zero chance of these rights being asserted.
For a country that has developed one of the most advanced constitutions in the world, isn’t it time, South Africa’s banking institutions lead the way on inclusive, not exclusive banking practices?