By Dr Dion George MP, DA Shadow Minister of Finance, and Bridget Masango MP, DA Shadow Minister of Social Development
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is currently being inundated with complaints about the escalating crisis regarding the government’s inability to pay social grants.
Vulnerable beneficiaries of the Child Support Grant, Old Age Pension and Disability Grants have been increasingly turned away from SASSA pay-points since November 2022. Today, they are simply being told that there is no money in their accounts.
In this context, the DA can reveal that the ANC government’s growing failure to pay life-sustaining social grants may not be an accident. In fact, the recently published budget reveals that the ANC plans to start loadshedding the social grants that impoverished people rely on to survive in the 2024/2025 financial year, which starts on 1 March 2024.
On page 35 of the 2023 budget review, the ANC government indicates that it will entirely abolish the social relief of distress grant on 1 March 2024. Cuts to other grants are sure to follow as the financial crisis caused by ANC corruption continues to escalate.
The reasons for this are obvious. Decades of ANC theft and corruption means that the government has now run out of money for grants, in exactly the same way that corruption at Eskom caused our country to run out of electricity.
Just like they are loadshedding your electricity, the ANC will start loadshedding your social grants on 1 March 2024.
As with electricity loadshedding, the ANC’s plan to take away social grants could plunge our country even deeper into chaos. 18 million South Africans rely on social grants to sustain themselves and their families.
In response to the ANC’s intention to imminently start loadshedding social grants, the DA is working on an emergency plan to ensure social grants remain funded. The DA not only deeply cares about protecting social grants from the ANC’s plan to take them away, but we are also the only party with the proven ability to responsibly manage public finances to ensure social grants are sustainably and reliably paid on time for years to come.
That decades of corruption has now caused the ANC government to run out of money for grants, is also an urgent reminder that they must be voted out to save our country.
The good news is that a national election will take place at exactly the same moment that the ANC will take away social grants in March 2024. It is at this election that voters can protect social grants by voting for a responsible and non-corrupt DA government that will ensure there will always be money to fund life-saving grants.
Only a new government built around the prudent financial management that the DA is famous for, will be able to ensure that we prevent the ANC’s plan to take away social grants. South Africans from all walks of life, including grant beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries who understand the urgency of protecting social grants to ensure social stability, now need to unite behind a new, caring DA government.
