Cape Town - A scandal and and national disgrace is how civil society and human rights organisations have described the non-payment of the Social Relief of Distress Grant (SRD) by Sassa to millions of beneficiaries for April and May.
These organisations, which include Black Sash, the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ), Pay the Grants, SP and Amandla.mobi have demanded that the government reverse what they said was the inhumane decision to exclude millions from the SRD grant and resolve “these catastrophic payment delays”.
During his State of the Nation Address in February, President Cyril Ramaphosa, announced that the Covid-19 SRD grant of R350 would be extended for a year, from April 2022 to March 2023, “to ensure that no person in this country has to endure the pain and indignity of hunger”.
Following the lifting of the National State of Disaster in April, the Department of Social Development developed the regulatory framework for the payment of the Covid-19 SRD grant within the social assistance legislation.
The department said this meant that additional qualifying and assessment criteria were added, and those who were previous recipients of the grant had to reapply, with payments expected to start in June.
However, these organisations said there was little confidence that the government would resolve all payments by then.
IEJ senior policy specialist Neil Coleman said the failure of the government to pay the grants was criminal and irresponsible. Coleman said the officials responsible must be held accountable.
“For others, the R350 sounds like nothing, but to people who are unemployed and don’t have any income and are most impacted by the rising unemployment, rising food prices, and fuel, this is a matter of life and death.
“The failure to pay 10 million people these grants affects about half the South African population. If you take that 10 to 11 million people with each of them having about two dependants, that’s up to 30 million people affected,” he said.
Coleman also poked holes in the revised qualifying criteria, which he described as discriminatory and regressive.
“When the Treasury decided on a budget of R44 billion for this financial year for the grant that provided for 10.5 million beneficiaries, they knew that there were a lot more people who qualified, and Minister Lindiwe Zulu went to Parliament last week and alluded that 13.4 million people had no income and 18.3 million were living below the poverty line.
“What they did was to compel the Social Development Department when they issued the regulations, to put in place requirements which would exclude a lot of people who would otherwise qualify, because they had to keep within the R44bn budget,” he said.
Cosatu Parliamentary co-ordinator Matthew Parks said abandoning millions to poverty was political lunacy and showed an absence of compassion or humanity.
“It would be a recipe for a repeat of what we saw in 2021. We must show solidarity with the poor and unemployed if we are to grow as a nation. The SRD Grant is critical to providing short- and medium-term relief to the unemployed,” he said.
National advocacy manager Hoodah Abrahams-Fayker said the current social assistance policy made provision for the government to provide financial support to children, the elderly and those living with disabilities who do not have sufficient income to support themselves.
Sassa was approached for comment but failed to respond on time.
However, Zulu said the regulations were strengthened to deter those who were not the intended beneficiaries of the grant, and were concluding agreements with banks to finalise the means test.