Insecurity in South African Social Security: An Examination of Social Grant Deductions, Cancellations, and Waiting

Abstract

In 2012, the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) contracted a private company, Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), to design a standardised national social assistance payment and registration system. The national card-based biometric enrolment and payment system was advanced as a way to make social grant payment more secure – for claimants, the state, and the national fiscus. In practice, however, it translated into forms of insecurity, which served to promote and reproduce precarity. This article considers some of these insecurities, with a focus on the three most pervasive: the cancellation of grants, the expansive, unauthorised monetary deductions from claimants’ accounts, and the new kinds of waiting that the system introduced.

Acknowledgements

The research for this article was conducted as part of my PhD, based at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER). I am grateful for comments, insights, and suggestions from Maxim Bolt and Kate Joseph.

Notes

¹ South African Social Security Agency, ‘You and Your Grants 2011/2’, available at www.sassa.gov.za, retrieved 12 July 2012.

² SAHRC, ‘The Right to Social Security’, in Economic and Social Rights Report Series (Pretoria, South African Human Rights Commission, 2003), p. 30.

³ P. Chatterjee, ‘Two Poets and Death: On Civil and Political Society in the Non-Christian World’, in T. Mitchell (ed.), Questions of Modernity, vol. 11, Contradictions of Modernity (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2000); P. Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (New York, Columbia University Press, 2004).

⁴ Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed, p. 60.

⁵ I refer to those receiving state social assistance in the form of non-contributory grants as ‘claimants’. In the scholarship and popular media, the words ‘recipient’ or ‘beneficiaries’ are more commonly used. I have taken the decision to use ‘claimants’ instead (except in instances of direct quotation or where the context requires a different term) as it implies action on the part of those getting grants, and connects my analysis of action around application and administration to the politics of the many actors involved in negotiation, administration and delivery. ‘Recipients’ tends to suggest passive inaction on the part of claimants, a position that I seek to challenge. In addition, and of great significance, ‘beneficiaries’ has the potential implication that grants are a privilege rather than an income from the state.

⁶ A. von Schnitzler, ‘Traveling Technologies: Infrastructure, Ethical Regimes and the Materiality of Politics in South Africa’, Cultural Anthropology, 28, 4 (2013), p. 673.

⁷ The Bushbuckridge municipality is made up of several small towns: Acornhoek, Thulamahashe, Bushbuckridge, Marite, Dwarsloop, and Mkhuhlu. Only 9 per cent of the population live in these centres; the remainder reside in small rural villages. See E. Mavungu, ‘Frontiers of Prosperity and Power: Explaining Provincial Boundary Disputes In Post-Apartheid South Africa’, PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011, p. 41.

⁸ This is the number of claimants. Because one claimant may receive multiple grants, the total number of claimants (almost 11 million) is lower than the total number of grants paid (almost 17 million). As an example, if someone were to receive an old-age grant (OAG) and serve as the primary caregiver of a child, they would then also claim the child support grant (CSG).

⁹ The Republic of South Africa, ‘Twenty Year Review South Africa, 1994–2014’, The Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation (2014), pp. 44–5, available at http://www.thepresidency-dpme.gov.za/news/Documents/20%20Year%20Review.pdf, retrieved 15 November 2015. V. Taylor, ‘The Social Security Journey’, conference presentation at the Social Security Seminar, hosted by the Black Sash and ActionAid South Africa, The Birchwood Hotel, Johannesburg, 11 August 2015).

¹⁰ F. Barchiesi, Precarious Liberation: Workers, the State, and Contested Social Citizenship in Postapartheid South Africa (Scottsville, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2011), p. 98.

¹¹ E. Bähre, ‘Liberation and Redistribution: Social Grants, Commercial Insurance, and Religious Riches in South Africa’,Comparative Studies in Society and History, 53, 2 (2011), pp. 371–92.

¹² They should not be accommodated in a state institution. In addition, a single person’s assets should be below the ceiling of R831,600, and R1.7 million if married, and each grant has further particular requirements. For example, there are age specifications for the OAG. For an OAG a single person should not have an annual income above R49,920 and a married couple’s combined income should fall below R99,840. Caregivers of children under 18 are eligible for a CSG if they earn an annual income of less than R34,800 and R69,600 if single or a married couple respectively.

¹³ South African Social Security Agency, ‘A Statistical Summary of Social Grants in South Africa: Fact Sheet 6 of 2015’, SASSA, 21 July 2015, available at http://www.sassa.gov.za/index.php/statistical-reports, retrieved 5 August 2015.

¹⁴ K. Breckenridge, ‘The Biometric State: The Promise and Peril of Digital Government in the New South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 31, 2 (2005), pp. 267–82; K. Breckenridge, ‘No Will To Know: The Rise and Fall Of African Civil Registration in 20th Century South Africa’, in Keith Breckenridge and Simon Szreter (eds), Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012).

¹⁵ Breckenridge, ‘The Biometric State’; Breckenridge, ‘No Will To Know’.

¹⁶ K. Breckenridge, ‘The Elusive Panopticon: The HANIS Project and the Politics of Standards in South Africa’, in C. Bennett and D. Lyon (eds), Playing the Identity Card: Surveillance, Security and Identity in Global Perspective (New York, Routledge, 2008), p. 41.

¹⁷ SASSA, ‘Annual Report 2012/2013’ (Pretoria, SASSA, 2013).

¹⁸ J. Sikhakhane, ‘R10bn Tender to Streamline Social Grant Payments for Recipients’, Sunday Independent, Johannesburg, 22 January 2012.

¹⁹ S. G. Collins, All Tomorrow’s Cultures: Anthropological Engagements with the Future (New York, Berghahn, 2008), p. 25.

²⁰ E. Hull and D. James, ‘Introduction: Popular Economies in South Africa’, Africa, 82, 1 (2012), p. 4.

²¹ A. James, ‘Providing Tighter Security and Greater Convenience’, The Star, Johannesburg, 28 October 2011; A. James, ‘Access Control with Biometric Precision’, The Star, 28 October 2011; A. James, ‘Ensuring Safety and Security’,The Star, 28 October 2011; P. Letsatsi, ‘Social Grant Makeover Betters Lives’, Mail and Guardian, Johannesburg, 10 October 2013.

²² P. Letsatsi, ‘State of the Art Technology Behind SA’s Social Grants’,The New Age, Johannesburg, 29 April 2013. Public pronouncements that technologies of social assistance were being used to streamline the system were not isolated to this period. See for example G. Heckl, ‘Province’s Pension Payouts Made Easy’, The Star, 26 July 2001.

²³ B. Pfaffenberger, ‘The Harsh Facts of Hydraulics: Technology and Society in Sri Lanka’s Colonization Schemes’, Technology and Culture, 31, 3 (1990), pp. 361–97.

²⁴ For example, J. Ferguson, ‘Formalities of Poverty: Thinking about Social Assistance in Neoliberal South Africa’, African Studies Review, 50, 2 (2007), pp. 71–86; J. Ferguson, Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Redistribution (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2015).

²⁵ For example, J. Seekings, ‘The Broader Importance of Welfare Reform in South Africa’, Social Dynamics, 28, 2 (2002), pp. 1–38; J. Seekings and N. Nattrass, Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2005); A. Makhulu, ‘A Brief History of the Social Wage: Welfare before and after Racial Fordism’, The South Atlantic Quarterly, 115, 1 (2016), pp. 113–24.

²⁶ A. Case, V. Hosegood, and F. Lund, ‘The Reach and Impact of Child Support Grants: Evidence from KwaZulu-Natal’, Development Southern Africa, 22, 4 (2005); A. Case and A. Menendez, ‘Does Money Empower The Elderly? Evidence From The Agincourt Demographic Surveillance Site, South Africa’, Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 35, 69 (2007), pp. 157–64; R. Twine et al., ‘Evaluating Access to a Child-Oriented Poverty Alleviation Intervention in Rural South Africa’, Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 35, 69 (2007), pp. 118–27; Progressus Research Development Consultancy and R. Gordon, ‘The Payment Experiences of Social Grant Beneficiaries’, FinMark Trust, Johannesburg, April 2012.

²⁷ G. Khunou, ‘Fathers Don’t Stand a Chance: Experiences of Custody, Access, and Maintenance’, Baba. Men and Fatherhood in South Africa (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2006), pp. 265–77; T. Hochfeld, ‘Cash Transfers and Social Transformation: How Do Women Receiving the Child Support Grant in Sophiatown, Johannesburg, Experience Intra-Household Gender Relations?’, proposal, University of the Witwatersrand, 2010; S. Mosoetsa, Eating from One Pot: The Dynamics of Survival in Poor South African Households (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2011).

²⁸ Ferguson, Give a Man a Fish.

²⁹ J. Hanlon, A. Barrientos, and D. Hulme, Just Give Money to the Poor: The Development Revolution from the Global South (Sterling, Kumarian Press, 2010); Ferguson, Give a Man a Fish.

³⁰ World Bank, Conditional Cash Transfers: Reducing Present and Future Poverty (Washington DC, World Bank, 2009).

³¹ See, for example, B. Larkin, Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure,and Urban Culture in Nigeria (Durham, Duke University Press, 2008); B. Larkin, ‘The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, 1 (2013), pp. 327–43; A. von Schnitzler, ‘Citizenship Prepaid: Water, Calculability, and Techno-Politics in South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 34, 4 (December 2008), pp. 899–917; von Schnitzler, ‘Traveling Technologies’.

³² Von Schnitzler, ‘Traveling Technologies’, p. 671.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ E.S. van Eeden, E.H. Ryke, and I.C. De Necker, ‘The Welfare Function of the South African Government Before and After Apartheid’, Social Work – Stellenbosch, 36, 1 (2000), pp. 1–24.

³⁵ F. Barchiesi, ‘Classes, Multitudes and the Politics of Community Movements in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, Centre for Civil Society Research Report (Durban, UKZN, 2004); Lund, Changing Social Policy, p. 6.

³⁶ Case, Hosegood, and Lund, ‘The Reach and Impact of Child Support Grants’; Case and Menendez, ‘Does Money Empower The Elderly?’; Twine et al., ‘Evaluating Access’; L. Patel and J. Triegaardt, ‘South Africa: Social Security, Poverty Alleviation and Development’, in Social Security, the Economy and Development (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 85–109; Progressus and Gordon, ‘The Payment Experiences of Social Grant Beneficiaries’.

³⁷ J. Steinberg, ‘Idea of Jobs for All Blinds Us to Need for Welfare’, Business Day, Johannesburg, 26 July 2013.

³⁸ A complex understanding of the construction of ‘the poor’ as a category, as well as a placeholder for the discourse of ‘responsibilisation’ in post-apartheid South Africa, can be found in P. Naidoo, ‘The Making of “The Poor” in Post-Apartheid South Africa: A Case Study of the City of Johannesburg and Orange Farm’, PhD thesis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2010.

³⁹ L. Steyn, ‘Stores Score on Pension Payday’, Mail and Guardian, 3 February 2012, available at http://mg.co.za/article/2012-02-03-stores-score-on-pension-payday/, retrieved 9 April 2014.

⁴⁰ ‘Grants: Short-Changed in Long Queues’, Mail and Guardian, 3 February 2012, available at http://mg.co.za/multimedia/2012-02-02-grants-shortchanged-in-long-queues, retrieved 8 July 2016.

⁴¹ Ibid.

⁴² Steyn, ‘Stores Score on Pension Payday’.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ J. Auyero, Patients of the State: The Politics of Waiting in Argentina (Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2012).

⁴⁶ G. Hage, ‘Waiting Out the Crisis: On Stuckedness and Governmentality’, in G. Hage (ed.),Waiting (Melbourne, Melbourne University Publishing, 2009), pp. 97–107.

⁴⁷ Department of Welfare, Report of the Committee for the Restructuring of Social Security (Chikane Committee) (Pretoria, Department of Welfare and Population Development, 1996).

⁴⁸ The 1996 Committee for Restructuring of Social Security or ‘Chikane Committee’, the 1997 White Paper for Social Welfare, the 1998 Lund Committee for Child and Family Support, and the 2000 Taylor Committee of Inquiry into a Comprehensive System of Social Security for South Africa.

⁴⁹ Donovan, ‘The Biometric Imaginary’.

⁵⁰ ‘South Africa Loses R1bn a Year to Pension Fraud’, Mail and Guardian, 14 February 1997.

⁵¹ Ibid.; see also T. Reddy and A. Sokomani, ‘Corruption and Social Grants in South Africa’, ISS Monograph (November 2008), p. 19.

⁵² Morokolo, ‘SASSA Debit MasterCard Reaches Milestone’, SA IT News, 21 August 2013, retrieved 6 December 2013 from http://saitnews.co.za/e-government/sassa-debit-mastercard-reaches-2/ (no longer available).

⁵³ L. Moloi, ‘South Africa Survey Online 2014/2015: Social Security’, South Africa Survey (Johannesburg, Institute of Race Relations, 2014).

⁵⁴ ‘Money Lenders in Court Over SASSA Fraud’,The Weekly, Bloemfontein, 18 July 2014.

⁵⁵ Interview with Elroy Paulus, National Advocacy Manager, Black Sash Trust, 27 March 2014; discussion with Sarah Sephton, Regional Director, Legal Resource Centre, Skype, 24 June 2014. All interviews for this article were conducted by the author.

⁵⁶ Interview with Arthur Direto, Initial Grant Reregistration, New Forrest, Amashongane Tribal Authority Offices, 23 February 2013.

⁵⁷ While the state is compelled to provide a fixed amount of free water per month, this often does not reach people or is not sufficient. Some work has shown that households can spend one-third of their income on water payments. See von Schnitzler, ‘Traveling Technologies’; von Schnitzler’s work references a study by M. Nefale, A Survey on Attitudes Towards Prepaid Meters in Soweto (Johannesburg, Centre for Applied Legal Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, 2004).

⁵⁸ Black Sash, ‘Unlawful, Immoral Deductions from Social Grants Should Stop, Says Black Sash’, Black Sash, 29 May 2013, available at http://www.blacksash.org.za/index.php/media-and-publications/media-statements/1397-unlawful-immoral-deductions-from-social-grants-should-stop-says-black-sash-29-may-2013, retrieved 11 August 2013.

⁵⁹ Black Sash is a partner of the Association for Community Advice Offices in South Africa.

⁶⁰ M. Banderker, ‘Grant Deductions Are Immoral: Black Sash’,Voice of the Cape, Cape Town, 11 September 2014.

⁶¹ In the media, these bank accounts are often referred to as ‘Sassa accounts’. However, while the card is branded with SASSA’s name and logo, it is a Grindrod bank account and it is CPS that has a partnership with the bank.

⁶² This includes the Constitution, particularly the following sections: S27(1) the right to social security, S27(2) that these are rights subject to progressive realisation, and S(36) that the right can be limited to the extent that it is ‘reasonable and justifiable in an open democratic society’. Furthermore, there are newer recommendations in the National Development Plan (NDP) that call for a social floor, or basic minimum standards, to be implemented by 2030.

⁶³ M. Banderker, ‘Black Sash Welcomes Legal Action Against CPS’,Voice of the Cape, 17 September 2014.

⁶⁴ ‘Minister Sets Sights on Loan Sharks’, Eastern Cape Today, East London, 17 September 2014.

⁶⁵ D. James, Money From Nothing: Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2014).

⁶⁶ N. Ntuli, ‘Grants Mixed Up In Microlending’, The Mercury, Durban, 5 September 2014.

⁶⁷ Ibid. Under the National Credit Act, passed in 2006, the maximum permissible interest rate on loans is 44 per cent.

⁶⁸ Social grants cannot be used as surety for a loan.

⁶⁹ According to the Social Assistance Acts.

⁷⁰ As Deborah James notes, ‘mashonisa’ is sometimes used by borrowers to refer to registered or unregistered lenders. However, for the purposes of drawing distinctions, I use the term to refer solely to the latter. James, Money From Nothing, p. 7.

⁷¹ See the following economic anthropological analyses, with varying degrees of focus on South Africa: J.I. Guyer, Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004); K. Hart, J.L. Laville, and A.D. Cattani, ‘Informal Economy’, in The Human Economy: A Citizen’s Guide (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2010); M. Bolt, ‘Waged Entrepreneurs, Policed Informality: Work, the Regulation of Space and the Economy of the Zimbabwean–South African Border’, Africa, 82, 1 (2012), pp. 111–30.

⁷² N. Vally, ‘A List of Deductions Recorded by a Sassa Official at a Paypoint in Bushbuckridge’,unpublished photograph, Bushbuckridge, 12 August 2014.

⁷³ S. Guduka, ‘Pensioner Exploited?’, News24, South Africa, 21 July 2015, available at http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Local/Express-News/Pensioner-exploited-20150721, retrieved 26 July 2015.

⁷⁴ K. Breckenridge, Biometric State: The Global Politics of Identification and Surveillance in South Africa, 1850 to the Present (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 19–20.

⁷⁵ South African Social Security Agency, ‘South African Social Security Agency’, SASSA Home, available at http://www.sassa.gov.za/, retrieved 1 December 2013.

⁷⁶ B. Maregele, ‘South Africa: SASSA Beneficiaries Still Struggling with Illegal Deductions’, GroundUp, Cape Town, 22 July 2015, available athttp://allafrica.com/stories/201507221226.html, retrieved 5 December 2015.

⁷⁷ Breckenridge, Biometric State, p. 16.

⁷⁸ Ibid.

⁷⁹ S. Belamant, quoted in A. Crotty, ‘Millions of Grant Recipients Ripped Off’’, Business Day Live, 7 September 2014.

⁸⁰ E. Pickworth, ‘Net1 Denies Subsidiary Has Behaved Illegally’, Business Day Live, 12 September 2014.

⁸¹ L. Twani, ‘Minister Sets Sights on Loan Sharks’, Eastern Cape Today, 12–19 September 2014.

⁸² E. Paulus, quoted in Banderker, ‘Grant Deductions Are Immoral’.

⁸³ As per the November 2013 Constitutional Court ruling.

⁸⁴ G. van Zyl, ‘Net1 Walks Away from New Sassa Tender’,Tech Central, Johannesburg, 18 May 2015, available at http://www.techcentral.co.za/net1-walks-away-from-new-sassa-tender/56704/, retrieved 15 November 2015.

⁸⁵ Interview with Black Sash about the Ministerial Task Team and the Sassa request for proposals, Johannesburg, 6 July 2015.

⁸⁶ G.C. Bowker and S.L. Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification And Its Consequences (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2000), p. 140.