With no signs that the Covid-19 pandemic is disappearing any time soon, government will probably have to find more money to extend the payment of the special grant of R350 for another few months, writes Ryland Fisher.
If South Africa was a perfect country, everyone would have had decent jobs which paid more than a living wage; and everyone would have had access to basic rights such as proper housing, reasonable education which prepares you for the jobs market, swift and fair legal justice, among many others.
But South Africa is not a perfect country. In fact, such a country does not exist anywhere in the world.
However, South Africa is probably a bit worse off than many other countries. It has arguably the highest level of inequality in the world, with millions having no hope of ever being able to find work or earning an income. Depending on who you speak with, South Africa’s unemployment rate is anything between 30% and 60%, with millions of young people never having worked years after matriculating and having no prospects of ever finding work.
An imperfect solution
It is in this context that social grants become important.
Yes, it is an imperfect solution to our social problems. We should rather be finding ways of creating jobs which could be more sustainable and could provide poor people with greater dignity. Imagine a society in which everybody worked, including those who receive social grants at the moment. But such a society does not exist and, I would argue, will not exist in my lifetime or my children’s lifetime.
The poor, as Jesus is quoted as saying in John Chapter 2 Verse 8 in the Bible, will always be with us.
This does not mean that we have to give up on fighting for a better life for everybody, and that we should not be envisioning a society in which the number of poor people will pale into comparison with the number of people who have adequate provisions.
But we are far from that society and, for now, we need to look at what is the best way to provide for those who do not have much.
In the past year, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the "normal" social grants have been extended to many who would not normally have qualified in the past.
READ | How SA's social security net changed our lives
Many in my social circle cannot imagine living on R350 a month, which is the amount that the government has made available since the beginning of lockdown about a year ago for those who have lost their ability to earn a living. This is a special grant meant to cover job losses due to Covid-19.
But the long queues of people at the post offices every month tell a story of people who appreciate every little bit, even if it is what appears to be an unreasonably low amount. Many people would have probably earned at least 10 times that amount before losing their jobs.
Having grown up poor myself, I saw first-hand how people in poor communities lived hand to mouth, yet were still able to help their neighbours with the occasional plate of food or cup of sugar. While my parents struggled to provide for me and my four siblings, we never went to bed hungry.
Apart from the approximately 18 million South Africans who receive monthly social grants, the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) has also been processing about 10 million applications monthly from people to check whether they qualify for the emergency R350 a month grant. For most of the past year, they have been paying between more than six million grants a month.
Expiry of grant end of April
According to a recent Sassa presentation to Parliament, it has been a difficult task to verify the claimants, with people’s status changing month to month and many people not having access to traditional verifying methods, such as permanent addresses, bank accounts or registered mobile phones. Sassa has, however, managed to make payments to bank accounts or via mobile phones.
The R350 grant was renewed on 11 February and is set to expire at the end of April, unless government extends it once again. At the beginning of February, more than R16 billion rand had already been spent on this grant, according to information attributed to Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu on the Sassa website. Another R6.3 billion had been set aside to continue paying the grant from February until the end of April, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni announced in his Budget speech in February.
With the end of April around the corner and no signs of the coronavirus disappearing any time soon, government will probably have to find money once again to extend the payment of the special grant of R350 for another few months.
Government will have no choice. Our vaccine rollout seems to be pedestrian at best, despite assurances by government that it will be stepped up and, while the numbers appear to be contained at the moment, the coronavirus pandemic, like an out-of-control wildfire, can easily flare up at any minute, meaning we can once again go back to a hard lockdown.
But irrespective of the level of our lockdown, the economy has been damaged almost beyond repair in the short term and many of those who lost their livelihoods over the past year will probably continue to be unemployed for many more months, if not years.
Unless government comes up with a more creative solutions, it looks like the R350 special grants will, like the biblical poor, be with us for a long time still.
- Ryland Fisher is an independent media professional and former newspaper editor.
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