SA’s R13bn social grant cuts are arbitrary, cruel and economically short-sighted

One of the biggest ostensible “successes” of the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) is R13-billion cut from social grants. Half of this comes from the long-standing grants – the child support, disability and older persons’ grants – and half from the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant. 

National Treasury claims that this is part of its “targeted and responsible savings” (Tars) programme – and social grants account for the largest share of Tars “savings”. While it may be targeted, it is not responsible, but arbitrary and cruel. The suggestion that these funds are being redirected to gender-based violence (GBV) and child stunting (both dire crises in need of much greater resources) is a cynical PR exercise that does a gross disservice to GBV victims, impoverished children, and social grant holders. 

The government can and must increase funding for GBV and stunting prevention – at a level much greater than the paltry MTBPS allocation – but the notion that this should or could come at the expense of existing social assistance is counterproductive and, frankly, appalling. 

Despite the framing used by the Treasury’s director-general in the media, the funds cut from social grants have not been specifically redirected to GBV and stunting initiatives – that’s simply not how budgeting works. All public spending comes from the same overall fiscal envelope. Instead, the small new sums allocated for GBV and stunting initiatives are being used rhetorically to legitimise and render palatable cuts to social grants, particularly on the heels of recent tragic events and public outrage on GBV and femicide. 

More people at risk

The reality is that more people will be at risk of GBV and malnutrition as a direct result of the cuts to social grants. Research overwhelmingly shows that cash assistance improves women’s economic independence, rendering them less vulnerable to partner violence.

It increases their ability to leave abusive situations. The child support grant has been demonstrated time and again to protect children from the worst impacts of poverty, and is the single most important intervention for improving child nutrition outcomes. Reducing access to the child support grant will probably hurt vulnerable women and children, more than the total of R7.2-billion allocated to GBV and stunting programmes will help them. 

The tax revenue forecast has been lifted in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement by R17-billion. The primary budget surplus reaches R140-billion this year. We have enormous untaxed wealth and resources in this country. We are a wealthy country by international standards, but an extreme outlier in terms of our poverty headcount. There is no need whatsoever to trade social grants off against support for GBV victims and the mitigation of child stunting. The resources are available to fund all of these priorities. The government has a moral and constitutional imperative to do so.

The minister of finance states that the social grant cuts are made possible by a reduction in social grant fraud. This is misinformation. Fraud has a specific legal definition in South Africa. It means intentionally deceiving others for financial gain.

The National Treasury is pricing in a decrease of more than a million child support, disability, older persons’ and other non-SRD grants, from 19.2 million in 2024 to 18.1 million in the coming year. The latest available SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) data (as of February 2026) show that 95% of grant cancellations were attributed to people being unable to complete reviews at Sassa offices. Hundreds of thousands of people are having their grants terminated because they are unable to comply with grant review processes due to transport costs, lack of stable access to the internet and inconsistent contact details, and endless queues. Does this make them fraudsters?

A much smaller number (5%) of grant cancellations occurred because reviews found those recipients to be ineligible. However, this would only constitute fraud if intentional deceit were proven. Sassa does not indicate this in its reporting on reviews – probably because the incidence of actual fraud is vanishingly small. Sassa’s annual reports since 2014, however, reveal an average of 53 grant recipient frauds per year, compared with an average of 241 frauds committed by government officials and contractors. 

‘Fraud’

Yet, the minister of finance has no qualms attributing all social grant cancellations to “fraud” and congratulating himself and his colleagues for the “savings” effected by depriving people in need of their entitlements. To my mind the term “fraud” is invoked for purposes of demonising vulnerable people as criminal and delinquent, and discourages public sympathy towards them. A slew of reporting has already followed, amplifying the claim that the government has uncovered R13-billion in grant fraud. 

The SRD grant is also being cut by R6.8-billion over the medium term – representing approximately 1.6 million recipients. This makes up about half of the R13-billion in cuts. It is, simply put, an outrage. Treasury no doubt hopes it will fly under the radar, since it appears only in the fine print of the medium-term expenditure framework. 

The reason for this cut is that Sassa has underspent significantly on the grant in the past year. For months, we haven’t actually known how significant the underspend has been, because, despite our repeated requests for data, Sassa has refused to disclose the rate of payment of the SRD grant for nearly a year. We knew they were hiding a plummeting payment rate – and the underspend revealed in the MTBPS confirms it. 

Mandatory biometric verification

This underspend is due to Sassa’s introduction in the past year of mandatory biometric verification. This happens after a person has been approved to receive the grant. It requires ownership of a high quality camera-enabled smartphone, a stable internet connection, and a smart ID card. Consequently it acts as a barrier for more than a million approved applicants to receiving their payments. These individuals have been demonstrated to have less than R624 per month in income, yet they are then expected to be able to complete a verification process that requires extensive resources. When they cannot, their grants are eventually cancelled, and chalked up to savings.

Unemployment has increased in the past year. A total of 500,000 more people are unemployed compared with 12 months ago. And 16.6 million people are eligible for the SRD grant, based on the government’s own criteria. The budget now allows for just seven million to receive it. A rapidly growing proportion of newborn babies in poverty are being prevented from accessing the Child Support Grant. 

What is the point of a fiscus, what is the point of a minister of finance, if not to distribute the nation’s resources to those most in need? Instead what we have is a government that is taking food out of the mouths of poor babies, in service – let’s be clear – to a doctrinaire and fantastical ideology of fiscal “stability” above all else, while baselessly accusing their caregivers of fraud, and paying lip service to child nutrition.

It is this government that is delinquent, not the struggling mothers and grandmothers who bear the burden of its cruelty. DM