The South African Social Security Agency’s (SASSA) recent admission that it does not have enough money to reinstate and extend the temporary disability grants that lapsed at the end of December is a massive cause for concern. According to SASSA’s executive manager responsible for grants administration, Dianne Dunkerley, the Agency only has R411 million of the R1.2 billion needed to extend the grant payments.
SASSA’s problem to continue to extend disability grant payments is one of its own making. Since the announcement of a continued Covid-19 lockdown, after the initial lockdown of three weeks, the Agency should have foreseen the extension of lapsing disability grant payments and planned accordingly. The Minister of Social Development, Lindiwe Zulu, is on the National Corona Command Council (NCCC) after all. But instead of ensuring that South Africa’s most vulnerable receive continuous financial aid essential to their health, well-being and survival, the Minister busied herself with regulations that sought to hamper vital aid reaching millions of people.
Had SASSA shown more haste in early 2020 to process applications and ensured that their offices were fully capacitated and that all posts for medical personnel to do the assessments were filled, the crisis could have been contained. But once again, it knowingly walked into a preventable situation – maybe because the SASSA CEO, Busisiwe Memela-Khambula, and the Minister rarely have to face the consequences of their ineptness and callousness.
SASSA needs to urgently reach out to National Treasury to seek a solution, because those reliant on social grants do not have days or weeks to wait. The grants they receive are often the only source of income and takes care of whole families. To put it bluntly; without their grant payments many people will starve. They cannot survive without it and the fear that they might have to because of SASSA’s impotence is beyond cruel.
While we welcome Minister Zulu’s announcement that she will table a plan in the next two weeks – a promise that we will most definitely hold her to – the Minister must consider that while she’s working away on her plan, some people might go hungry in this time. SASSA’s has known about the expiration for months now. Why is the Minister only looking for a solution now? This calamity was completely preventable and is 100% on the Minister and SASSA’s hands.
The Minister’s plan has to be more than vague placations so characteristic of the ANC government. It must be detailed and answer crucial questions on:
- The number of beneficiaries being assessed in each province and how to increase the capacity to process each application;
- The amount of applications that will be processed each day to deal with the backlog and how long it will take to clear it in its entirety;
- The number of doctors and medical personnel that have been hired in each province and whether this will be sufficient to effectively deal with the backlog;
- The employment of easy and easily accessible online applications for those able to access the internet;
- The redeployment of the promised volunteers and community activists to assist those unable to access online platforms so that they don’t have to expose themselves to a dangerous virus to stand in line at SASSA offices; and
- How SASSA plans to cover the financial cost of eradicating the backlog.
Let’s be clear, the solution cannot include under any circumstances the non-payment of disability grants to beneficiaries. SASSA dug this hole, and SASSA must suffer the consequences – not the grant recipients who have spent days in the wind and the rain in the hopes of being one of only 50 to be allowed entry in the offices to try and solve their desperation, and are too scared to return home because they have to face the hunger of their children.
They might not have a crumb to eat and little prospect of finding alternative funding to buy food. Has the Minister ever felt the unending ache of being truly hungry and knowing that there is nothing to be done about it? If she had, she might have had more empathy for those in her care. She would surely not have just stood by and watched as vulnerable people were sprayed with water cannons outside SASSA offices.
SASSA and Minister Zulu is a blight on society. They are a plague as insidious and dangerous as Covid-19, and as uncaring about their victims. Minister Zulu should have been fired a long time ago.