Johannesburg - One of the rights groups, which have approached the Constitutional Court over the social grant crisis, will ask it to declare that Cash Paymaster Services may not make a profit from a new deal to distribute grants.
Freedom Under Law argues that a “no benefit” order, imposed by the court in relation to CPS’s current contract, should also be made to apply to a new deal being hammered out with the company.
The organisation is taking a harder stance on the point than the Black Sash, which has approached the court on the matter, asking that the terms of a new contract should be “reasonable”.
The Constitutional Court will hear argument on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng has set down Monday as a deadline for the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) to account on how it declared itself unable to take over the administration of grants from next month.
Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini has settled on CPS as the only viable alternative, and has sidestepped the need to secure the Constitutional Court’s approval for extending the contract by stipulating that instead she was renewing it.
Advocate Paul Hoffman, the director of rights group Accountability Now, said he believed the court would dismiss the technical distinction Dlamini is seeking to make.
“That is an egg dance. I don’t think the Constitutional Court will be fooled by it If you allow a situation where illegality is profitable, we are on slippery slope leading to corruption,” Hoffman said.
The Constitutional Court in 2013 declared the contract with CPS unlawful as it flowed from a flawed tender process, but it suspended the ruling for the duration of the contract so as not to compromise the poor.
Sassa last week formally opened negotiations to retain CPS’s services, but again deviated from normal procurement rules in that it negotiated with a single bidder. Dlamini would therefore need National Treasury to approve the deviation, which it has said it
could not do.
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan is expected to appear before Parliament’s standing committee
on public accounts on Tuesday to explain his stance on the matter.