Since I have been silent for quite some time, it had to be something big to make me come out of the woodwork and make my opinions known. The South African Department of Social Development has announced that all of the estimated 15 million social grant recipients in the country will be investigated and made to re-register in order to create a database of grant recipients and in order to prevent fraud in relation to the receipt of grants by persons who are not entitled thereto.
There are numerous problems with this process, which I will list below.
1. Absurdly, the supposed reason for this re-registration is to create a national database of grant recipients. In terms of the South African Social Security Agency Act of 2004, the Agency (Sassa) was tasked with creating such a database in terms of aforementioned Act. What the Minister is saying is that no such database exists, which means according to my supervisor Professor Kitty Malherbe, that Sassa has been operating illegally since its inception.
2. The Minister has said that Sassa will run this re-registration, the aims of which is to combat fraud and corruption. Hang on - isn't Sassa currently involved in illegal activity, since it apparently does not have the legally required database?
3. 15 Sassa officials have been arrested for engaging in illegal activity relating to grant recipients' fraud. This is the same Sassa who will be running the re-registration to combat fraud..... Talk about circular logic.
4. One of the aims of this process is to determine a) those persons receiving grants who are not entitled to and b) which persons who are not currently receiving grants but who are entitled thereto. The Minister has said that people will be sent door to door to facilitate this investigation. There are a number of problems with this. Firstly, how can you determine who shouldn't be getting a grant, if you cannot adequately identify those people who should? This is where disability comes in. South Africa has no workable definition of disability. We can therefore not identify exactly who is disabled for purposes of receiving the grant. how, the, can we assert that a particular person should have their grant taken away, if we cannot provide some solid proof that they are not disabled for purposes of the grant?
The other major problem is that this process is going to require manpower. Which means people need to be trained and hired. Which requires funding. Which will come from.....? Public funds that could be better utilised in providing better social services for disadvantaged individuals, rather than engaging in this time consuming waste of resources. As for the door-to-door thing, what this process amounts to is a review of each one of the 50 million people in South Africa. How else can it be determined who should or should not be receiving a particular grant?
Mention must again be made of the notion of combating fraud and corruption by means of this re-registration. What makes anyone think that the official doing the door-to-door investigation is above reproach and could not be swayed by a few thousand rand or similar offer? There is nothing preventing the individual involved in the review from incorrectly recording the details of individuals to ensure that their social grants are not ceased.
The mind boggles.
While the objectives of re-registration are certainly admirable, this is NOT the means to achieve those ends. One cannot in the same breath accuse Sassa of having failed to meet its legislative obligations, employing corrupt officials and then expect that same institution of solving all the problems relating to fraud and the non-compliance with legislation! In other words, some other mechanism of reviewing the awarding of social grants needs to be implemented. All this process is going to achieve is angering the public and possibly depriving those individuals who need social grants the most from those funds.
We will have to wait and see how the debacle unfolds.
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