Can the SRD grant court order be implemented? Activists say yes

#PayTheGrants and the Institute for Economic Justice say the government can afford to increase the R370 Social Relief of Distress grant and raise the income threshold to allow more people to qualify for the grant. Archive photo: Barbara Maregele.

The High Court in Pretoria has ruled that regulations limiting access to the R370-a-month Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant are unconstitutional and invalid. The court has ordered the government to increase the grant, raise the income threshold and allow people to apply in person. But is this practical?

The #PayTheGrants campaign and the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ), which brought the court action, say it is.

Here are their answers to GroundUp’s questions.

Question: The judge said only regular payments should be included in an applicant’s income, not occasional payments. How could this be implemented?

Institute for Economic Justice:

SASSA could assess people’s means in the same way they assess other grants, instead of trying to distinguish between different types of deposits when they check the recipients’ bank accounts every month.

Applicants for other social grants (like the child support grant) can tell SASSA their income via a sworn affidavit.

SASSA then has the right to ask for supporting documents in the form of correspondence, proof of unemployment, or three months’ worth of bank statements.

New SRD applicants could be assessed based on their self-declared income and financial support (using the court-determined definition of income and financial support).

For most other grants there is no need for recipients to re-apply unless their grant is reviewed or unless their status changes.

But for the SRD grants, recipients’ eligibility is reassessed every month through bank account surveillance (“bank verification”). This means they may be deemed eligible in one month and not the next. This leads to uncertainty and an inability to plan.

Applicants need to be given the benefit of the doubt. It is not always possible to definitively prove to the government that you have no money.

Once the application is approved, it should be valid, and the grant paid out monthly until there is a change in a beneficiary’s means. Beneficiaries can be required to notify SASSA of any such change. Beneficiaries could also be prompted to confirm eligibility every six months via a signed declaration, either online or at the SASSA office.

To further enforce this system, as is the case with other grants, SASSA also has the right to audit beneficiaries at random, and ask for documentation or motivation.

There is also the possibility of developing an integrated register with SASSA, the Department of Social Development, the Department of Labour and the Department of Home Affairs, that could detect large changes in income. If anomalies are detected, SASSA could request documents from beneficiaries.

#PayTheGrants:

Firstly, why does this distinction matter? Right now, every single cent is treated as “income”, and if there is R0.01 over R624, the application is denied. We need to see the new widow receiving her late husband’s funeral policy payout of R1,200. Not enough for the funeral, and now no SRD either. Or the father already waiting for last month’s SRD still not paid, then forced to sell the TV for R700 to provide for his kids. Now rejected. Or the son who agrees to use his bank account to facilitate stokvel savings for his elderly mother, and forgoes his SRD. Loans, family help, child support, payouts, alimony, transfers, it does not matter.

Under the current definition, people are punished for simply trying to survive. The judge is proposing that only regular payments received from work, investments, or other state legal entitlements count as income and financial support.

SASSA’s systems are already set up to do this for other social grants. So there are already answers we can draw from and build on.

Question: How could South Africa afford to expand the grant?

Institute for Economic Justice:

Our research shows that there are resources available to achieve this. We have published a policy brief with 19 proposals which could garner between R275-billion and R355-billion per year. These include: accessing government reserves, redirecting wasteful spending, and increasing the taxation of the wealthiest people and corporations. We could even marginally increase our borrowing if government debt is invested in programmes that rapidly and effectively boost economic growth.

We have also conducted research that shows that we can afford an expansion in social protection spending. Our research and international studies have methodically and repeatedly shown that this is an investment which helps to grow the economy and boost government revenue. It stimulates consumption and employment in depressed areas, it enables economically excluded people to take risks, start enterprises, search for jobs, gain skills and plan their financial futures.

The National Treasury states in its court papers that it could cost an additional R60-billion to fund the changes the court has upheld. R60-billion is around 2.5% of the budget, a small price to pay to improve the lives of the poorest 50% of the population. The Treasury itself has acknowledged that the SRD Grant is highly effective and that no other programme could reach so many people at a similar cost.

#PayTheGrants:

Our partners like IEJ and other organisations have done in-depth work on funding models. Potential sources include: safely leveraging short-term debt, focusing on corruption and wastage of existing spending, fining corporate environmental violations, implementing progressive social security taxes, or championing the necessity of a wealth tax in the most unequal country on earth.

Question: With long queues already at SASSA offices, how could SASSA ensure efficient in-person application processes for the SRD grant?

Institute for Economic Justice:

Warnings that SASSA offices would be inundated are overblown. More than 17-million people have already managed to apply for the SRD grant at some point. Those applications remain active, and there is no need to ask these individuals to re-apply under a new system. Following the court order, many of those whose applications were refused would now be approved.

Estimates of the number of qualifying persons under the conditions of the court order are 18.3-million. As such, as long as SASSA honours existing active applications, we expect that the number of new applications will not be overwhelming.

As an illustration: on average, there were 120,000 new applications a month between February and September 2024. Even when in-person applications are possible, many applications will still be made online. SASSA has more than 300 branches nationwide. If half of all new applications are made in person each month, that would average out to 200 per branch or 10 per branch per day.

#PayTheGrants:

We are not asking that online access to applications be closed. Nor is the judgment demanding this. We are simply asking that the poorest be allowed the same rights of other grant beneficiaries: to receive help and guidance in person.

And many millions are already online. They would not, or should not, be expected to re-apply in person if they already have an active application that is working for them.

The problem is that SASSA is denied the operational budget it needs to provide fair, effective, and administratively just social grant services.

The current “SRD call centre” is inadequate. It is outsourced at major expense to SASSA, with insufficient staff capacity, run by agents who are not properly trained or equipped with information or timely updates about the SRD.

SASSA’s offices, emails, and helplines are also already inundated with SRD beneficiaries begging for assistance. This ruling does not create a problem, it highlights it.

The government should see this as an opportunity to fix this, and revitalise the wider social grants system. To properly equip our SASSA offices, and implement clear mechanisms for accountability of their officials to their communities.

Steps to achieve this should include:

• Fixing SASSA office infrastructure, short-staffing, and weak IT systems ;
• Redesigning the user interface of the SRD’s digital platforms to actually suit its intended users;

• Insourcing the SRD call centre for institutional knowledge and accountability;
• Creating clear and comprehensive SRD guidelines for all staff to be able to refer to, with full training;

• Creating clear, effective, frequent, and user-tested official communication;
• Ensuring all offices and call centre agents have copies of any official communication published, and internal systems updates;

• Collaborating with community organisations to provide in-person assistance;
• Hosting partnerships between government, civil society, and grant delivery bodies, to oversee, troubleshoot, and improve SRD grant administration and delivery.

Question: The judge said the SRD grant is permanent and its value needs to be increased. Is this a step towards a broader basic income grant (BIG)?

Institute for Economic Justice:

Yes. This is the policy of the government as well. We have heard time and again from the President at various SONAs, the Minister of Social Development and even the Minister of Finance, that the SRD grant will not be removed and that it will instead form the foundation for a more expansive system of basic income.

Formally making the grant permanent is the first step.

The next step would be developing a plan for a basic income, ultimately universal, with clear time frames. It has always been our view that universality has to be progressively realised by way of a progressively increased means-test threshold. In the short term, it can be targeted to those who need it most - all those living in poverty. The judge also argued in the ruling that it should not be denied to anyone living in poverty. So, initially, the income threshold can be set at the upper bound poverty line and then gradually increased over and above inflation to reach universality. Benchmarks in the process could be the National Minimum Wage, the income tax threshold, multiples of the grant value or multiples of the poverty line.

#PayTheGrants:

Yes. These court rulings are revolutionary. They confirm, through a lens of constitutional justice, that aggressively forcing people to prove their poverty is not only undignified and damaging; it doesn’t work.

More about Social Grants

• Chaotic switch to Black Card: What Postbank says it’s doing to fix the problems 18 February 2025
• Deadline to replace SASSA Gold Cards extended to 20 March 14 February 2025
• Pensioners queue for hours to replace expiring SASSA cards 14 February 2025

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