Minister of Social Development, Bathabile Dlamini, has through word and inaction, demonstrated her clear disregard of the Constitutional Court ruling declaring the SASSA contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) invalid. She has further heaped scorn on the advice of the Minister of Finance in his 1 February 2017 letter to her offering remedial recourse to ensure that almost 17 million people receive their social security grants come 1 April 2017.

The haughty response from the Minister of Social Development to Treasury, dated 8 February, states that, “her Department was in charge of payments of grants and that interactions with Treasury as part of a joint technical team were not to map out the future of social grants, but to merely analyse available options”. By all accounts and simple comprehension of the said letter from Treasury, this was precisely what was being proposed. In addition, Treasury, as the ultimate steward of the resources of the country, added the caution that maintaining the status quo would open government to legal action. This hefty matter appears to be lost on the Minister. 

For the poorest South Africans, 1 April 2017 may indeed be April Fool’s Day as they return empty-handed from SASSA collection points, when the contract of Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), distributors of social grants on behalf of SASSA, comes to an end on 31 March.   

For more than 16 million beneficiaries, the next few weeks remain uncertain and deeply worrying. For people dependent on the Child Support Grant (R350 pm), the Grant for Older Persons (R1510 pm), the Disability Grant (R1510 pm), the Grant-in-aid (R350 pm), the Care Dependency Grant (R1510 pm), the War Veteran’s Grant (R1530 pm), the Foster Care Grant (R890 pm) and the Social Relief of Distress Grant, the unmitigated mess created by the incompetence and leaderless SASSA may be a case of life or death. Government’s R10 billion a month spend on the poorest of the poor is in serious jeopardy.