According to the Department of Social Development, almost 8 million grant applications for the social relief distress grant (SRD) were authorised in January alone.
About 13.5 million applications for the SRD had been submitted to the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) as of the end of January. Between 7.4 million and 7.8 million of these applicants are accepted each month, according to minister of social development Lindiwe Zulu.
With 7.8 million participants and a grant price of R350, this works out to R2.7 billion per month being spent from the national budget to help South Africans who are struggling financially through one of the numerous programs included in the total social wage.
More than 25 million South Africans get social security benefits in the form of income support. Around 60% of the government budget is allocated to social salaries, according to the department of Social Development.
There are also more programs in place to help with free housing, utilities, education, disability, and health care.
Concerns about recent late payments were addressed by the minister, Lindiwe Zulu, during a hearing of a parliamentary committee by stating that all payments and statements are now current and genuine.
“In terms of payments, over 95% of accepted candidates received money in the first several months. In August 2022, its coverage decreased to roughly 90%. In more recent months, we saw a further decline, down to 85%,” said Zulu.
The grant will continue to be extended, according to the most recent State of the Nation Address (SONA) given by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
This idea is shared by the finance minister, Enoch Godognwana, who declared that the medium-term budget will be extended until March 2024 in late 2022.
According to Momentum Investments, the grant’s continuance is putting further strain on the national budget.
The department revised the rules controlling the disbursement of the R350 grant, and those modifications were gazetted in August 2022.
To account for food insecurity, the means test income level was increased from R350 to R624 per month.
Formerly, anyone who made more than R350 a month were not eligible for the award. The threshold was raised to R624 with the adjustment, increasing the number of persons who might be eligible for the grant.