As South African parents trade the festive season in for the back-to-school rush, many child support grant beneficiaries across the country have been dealt a blow after payments from the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) failed to reflect in their accounts.

Thousands of parents who make the R510 grant stretch to take care of their children’s needs had their payments suspended, allegedly with little or no warning from Sassa.

Daily Maverick paid visits to Sassa offices across the country, where disappointed child support grant recipients joined long queues in a quest for answers.

Gauteng

In Johannesburg, some Eldorado Park beneficiaries have been left with little to no resources to get their children ready for the new school year.

Elizabeth Raiters, the deputy chairperson at the NGO #PayTheGrants, has been assisting beneficiaries affected by the grant payment failure. 

Raiters said that on Monday, 8 January, she accompanied 100 child support grant beneficiaries to the Sassa offices in Eldorado Park to ask why they had not received payouts. She said that while some of the grants were suspended because of incorrect bank details or changes to names, other reasons given for suspension seemed arbitrary.

This was the case for a mother of five and child grant recipient Isa da Gama, who was told her grant had been suspended because her bank account was not Fica-compliant.

We can’t wait until February… because I think, Wednesday or Tuesday the school is opening. How are my children going to go to school [with] bare feet?

Raiters accompanied Da Gama to Standard Bank, where the bank revealed that her account was in order. Armed with the documentation proving that her grant should not have been suspended, Da Gama joined other anxious beneficiaries in a snaking line at 4am on Wednesday.

However, she was then told she would have to return with an affidavit from the police, in addition to her children’s report cards.

“You won’t believe how this feels. It’s very painful and sad, especially when you have children who are crying, saying that they are hungry,” Da Gama told Daily Maverick.

“Now, I’m hustling. My children are going back to school. They don’t have school shoes, no stationery, there’s no food, my fridge is even laughing at me, my cupboards are empty. So, what do we do in this situation?”

Child support grant recipients queue outside the Sassa offices in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, on 11 January 2024 to complete documents after some of them did not receive their grant in January. (Photo: Hoseya Jubase)

Da Gama was told by a Sassa representative that the grant payments would resume in February, but for the mother of five, February is too far off. 

“It’s a long month. We can’t wait until February… because I think, Wednesday or Tuesday the school is opening. How are my children going to go to school [with] bare feet?” Da Gama asked.

Raiters has called on Sassa to make direct payments to the affected beneficiaries.

“We want Sassa to do immediate manual payments. They can do it. They know who the beneficiaries are. How are the beneficiaries going to survive for the next three weeks without the payment?” Raiters said.

She said some beneficiaries were already in debt to loan sharks after previous grant payments failed to come through and were being backed into a corner because of their efforts to support their children financially.

Western Cape

Daily Maverick visited the Sassa office in Athlone, Cape Town, where people in a long queue — mostly women with young children — were waiting to be assisted. Many were waiting to complete new grant applications. However, two mothers reported that they were there to find out why Sassa had not paid their grants for January.

Ruwayda Meyer, a mother from Hanover Park, has been receiving the child support grant for her four-year-old twins for the past three years. However, when the date for this month’s payment arrived, the funds did not.

“[Sassa] only sent me a letter to state that I need to go collect a letter at the Lansdowne Post Office. I went there but there was no letter. They said I needed to appear at Sassa before 15 January,” she said.

Despite arriving at the Athlone office at 6am on Thursday, along with her two children, Meyer said that it didn’t look like she was going to be attended to that day. Sassa officials reportedly told the crowd that they would only be serving people up until a certain point in the queue. Those beyond that point would have to return another day.

“It doesn’t seem like they’re going to help us and who’s to say I’m going to have money to come again next week? I don’t have an income, [the children] don’t have a father that supports them… This is the only income I get for my children,”  Meyer said. 

“I had to go ask my grandma, who’s a pensioner, for taxi fare to get myself to Sassa… I’m still waiting to see someone just to find out what the reason was [for withholding the grant].”

Meyer said that she had been planning to put her children in a crèche from this year, but was unable to do so without the support of the grant.

Another mother, Naashikah Davids, told Daily Maverick she had not received her daughter’s care dependency grant for January. As her daughter was born with Down syndrome and needs special care, Davids qualifies for the grant until her daughter turns 18.

“I’ve been receiving her grant for six years now; I’ve never had a problem… All of a sudden, on 5 January last week, I saw there’s no money in the account. I came here last Friday to ask what was happening and they couldn’t give me a straight answer. They told me that I didn’t take note of a verification SMS that was sent to me,” she said.

Davids has since had to return to the office twice with documents requested by Sassa officials. 

“We can’t be pushed around like this, we depend on this money. My daughter goes to a special-needs school, they require educational toys… so this money helps,” she said. 

“I feel very disappointed because I feel that Sassa is just turning people away… Every time you come, it’s a different thing… We sit here for hours and then we get told we must come back again next week. It’s not fair to parents.”

KwaZulu-Natal

Sassa officials at the Hammarsdale township branch, between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, said on Thursday they had received queries from disgruntled grant beneficiaries who had not received their payouts. 

One official said, “The challenge [is that] details do not match with the identity details in your bank account. For example, this person is registered as ‘Mkize’ here, but in their bank account details, it could be this ‘Mkhize’, with an ‘h’ — this then comes across as fraud.”

A South African Social Security Agency mobile truck stationed at the Hammarsdale township branch in KwaZulu-Natal. (Photo: Naledi Sikhakhane)

A 35-year-old mother of two from Hammarsdale, who chose to remain anonymous, said she hadn’t received the child support grant for January. She was told by Sassa officials that her payout had been delayed because she had recently switched payment methods for the grant. She was referred to the Post Office to sort out the situation. 

When asked if she would then be paid the grant, she said, “I will find out there. I am hopeful it will get sorted. My situation is better because I only need uniforms for my children, not food. I don’t know where I will get the money for the uniform if they tell me to wait until next month at the Post Office.”

Since she is unemployed, she says transport fares are a challenge in sorting out issues around the grant. Every round trip costs her more than R26.

Eastern Cape

In the Eastern Cape, mothers queued for hours at Sassa offices but many left with no information about when they would be able to access their social grants. 

There were long queues at Sassa’s Mthatha office. Some mothers left the office angry, alleging that they were not given detailed information about why they did not get their January grants and when they were going to get them. 

I ended up going to loan sharks on Monday this week to borrow money so that I can buy food for my child.

A 35-year-old woman in a queue at the Mthatha office on Thursday said: “They did not tell us why we didn’t get our money. For me, that is the worst part. We are in their offices, and still, they cannot tell us when we are going to get the money. There is no direction at all. We don’t have food for our babies at home. I use this money to buy food for my baby.” 

The mother had to queue from early morning until 2pm before being seen, only to be told to go home and wait.

Another mother was told to sign a form, go home and wait. She said she was desperate as she needed the money for food and nappies for her child.

One woman said: “When I asked about what exactly happened, they told me that we are using different surnames [from] when we signed Sassa forms and our bank account forms, but that is not true at all. I have been using my surname on all documents. They even asked me to provide a marriage certificate and I told them I am not married…

 “So, it’s a long story and I really don’t understand, but I will wait until they deposit the money because I have signed all those documents today.”

Another woman said she had been trying to access her grant since last Friday. “I ended up going to loan sharks on Monday this week to borrow money so that I can buy food for my child. I had to do something that I did not plan to do at all.” 

She wasn’t hopeful that the situation would be solved soon, stating, “As I see it, we are going to wait for a long time.” 

Sassa’s explanation

Sassa released a statement on Wednesday, 10 January, attributing the suspension of the grants to incorrect banking details provided by beneficiaries when they applied for grants or changed their methods of payment.

Sassa spokesperson Paseka Letsatsi told Daily Maverick that 150,000 child support grants were suspended at the beginning of January because the beneficiaries changed their details without notifying the agency.

Letsatsi explained that Sassa verifies the banking details and names of beneficiaries at the beginning of every month to ensure that fraud is not taking place and the entity is not paying “ghost” beneficiaries.

While many beneficiaries complained that their grants were suspended with little or no notice, the Sassa spokesperson insisted that letters of notification were sent to the affected individuals before the suspensions. 

“In some instances, to be fair, you will find that people stay in informal settlements or they moved because of floods and the letters may not reach them,” Letsatsi said.

He said a change of surname due to marriage might also result in grants being suspended and emphasised the importance of keeping personal details up to date on Sassa’s systems.

When asked what Sassa was doing to keep grant beneficiaries informed of how incorrect details could affect their payouts, Letsatsi conceded that the agency should be doing more to educate citizens about the grant system.

“We must upscale our communication drive so that people are alerted. We must use all forms of media available. We must check in with counsellors and traditional healers. We must go to schools. We must make sure we are in all corners of South Africa so that people know that when there is a change in their name or when they change their accounts [they must notify Sassa],” Letsatsi said.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Sassa cash paypoints to be phased out by April 2024 with ‘devastating’ implications for rural grant recipients

He added that Sassa suspends grants where there is an error in personal details to keep everything above board with the Auditor-General. 

“If we don’t do it, the AG will pick it up and it will be an audit query. If you do it, people will stand up and fight and say you are insensitive,” Letsatsi said. 

GroundUp has reported that the unpaid grants might be the result of a system error at Sassa. However, Letsatsi insisted that no error had occurred.

The Democratic Alliance’s Bridget Masango has called on the South African Human Rights Commission to speed up its investigation into a complaint laid by the party last year after a series of payment failures by Sassa.

Masango referenced the 150,000 beneficiaries who were left without payment in January. 

“These perpetual payment failures erode South Africa’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens’ constitutional rights to human dignity, life, healthcare, food, water and social security, as well as infringing on the rights of children as they are disproportionately affected and will suffer the most long-term consequences,” she said. DM