The Universal Basic Income Coalition (UBIC) has submitted to the Select and Standing Committees on Finance, raising grave concerns about R13 billion in proposed reductions to social grant spending over the medium term, announced in the 2026 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS). 

These reductions will come from both the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant and the long-standing grants, including the child support grant (CSG), the older persons’ grant (OPG) and the disability grant (DG). They represent about 3 million fewer grant-holders across the SRD and other grants. 

These cuts go against prior recommendations of the Committees on Finance. In 2026, the Committees recommended that National Treasury and DSD table, ahead of the 2026 Budget, a comprehensive policy paper on the future of the SRD grant and basic income options, including costs, and macroeconomic impacts of higher values. The paper was to set out financing options including progressive tax measures. The Committees also called for immediate steps to reduce wrongful exclusions, and for a credible funding strategy that avoids disproportionate cuts to other essential social programmes. These recommendations have not been complied with. 

The present cuts have been characterised by the Minister of Finance and Treasury officials as “savings”, derived from “reducing fraud”. This is a distortion and a misrepresentation. We outline in our parliamentary submission how the cuts have really been achieved—through arbitrary exclusions resulting from heightened administrative barriers to access. These differ in the case of the SRD grant from the long-standing grants. Preventing fraud is necessary. But excluding eligible people from social assistance is not a legitimate measure of fiscal efficiency. We break it down below.

Where do the social grant “savings” come from?

Since March 2025, National Treasury has placed conditions on the operating budget of the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), requiring SASSA to surveil the bank accounts, data, and credit records of all grant holders and applicants, and ‘flag’ those deemed suspicious to present at SASSA offices so their eligibility can be reviewed. The consequences have been severe. According to SASSA’s reported review data (current to February 2026), approximately 95% of cancellations in the relevant period followed beneficiaries’ failure to complete reviews, rather than findings that they were ineligible. Hundreds of thousands of grants have been cancelled in the past eighteen months.

The process for flagging people for review is in itself highly flawed. Data sources are inaccurate and unable to show whether a person truly qualifies for social assistance. Once you have been flagged, particularly for those with the least resources, completing a grant review can be an insurmountable challenge: 

SASSA uses two methods to notify beneficiaries of grant reviews: an SMS sent to the number originally used to apply, or a delayed payment through the so-called ‘fourth payment date’, which many beneficiaries do not recognise as a review notification. Both methods create barriers to accessing grants. Beneficiaries may no longer have access to their original phone numbers or understand the review requirements. Those who try to comply face costly travel, long queues, repeated visits, and little explanation for why they were flagged. Reviews of children’s grants also require biometric verification for children over three, forcing caregivers to incur additional transport costs and children to miss school. Older persons and people with disabilities face further physical and health-related barriers. As a result, eligible beneficiaries risk losing their grants not because they are found ineligible, but because they cannot navigate an inaccessible review process.

We have heard from many people that they queued for multiple days and were unable to be helped before their deadline passed and their grant was cancelled. Contrary to the official government narrative that all social grant cuts were due to fraud reduction, SASSA’s latest annual report does not report any cancelled grants as actually fraudulent. 

Rather than being based on evidence, the narrative of “fraud” is being used by the government to paint vulnerable people as criminal and delinquent, to discourage public sympathy towards them, all while they are stripped of their rights. UBIC supports good faith, proportionate efforts to mitigate fraud in the grant system and ensure public funds are spent efficiently. But we also know that the need in society for social assistance is increasing, not decreasing. Unemployment is increasing, as is the cost of living. It is completely irrational in light of this to set a target of reducing the overall quantum of social grants in payment, and unconscionable to achieve this target through arbitrary exclusions. 

Where do the SRD grant “savings” come from?

In the case of the SRD grant, the cuts result from SASSA’s underspending on the grant in the past year. This underspend is due to SASSA’s introduction of mandatory “electronic know-your-client” (eKYC) biometric verification. This usually happens after a person has been approved to receive the grant. It requires ownership of a high-quality camera-enabled smartphone, a stable internet connection, and a smart ID card. 

Consequently, it acts as a barrier for approximately one million approved applicants to receive their payments. These individuals have been demonstrated to have less than R624 per month in income, yet they are then expected to be able to complete a verification process that requires extensive resources. When they cannot, their grants are eventually cancelled and chalked up to savings. 

These cuts also highlight a deeply troubling transparency deficit. SASSA has refused to report on the rate of payment of the SRD grant for nearly a year. Moreover, most of their standard statistical reports, which provide data on all social grants, as well as reviews, have disappeared from their website. UBIC is concerned by inconsistent public reporting of SRD approvals, payments and cancellations. Without transparent and regular data, neither Parliament nor the public can adequately determine whether spending reductions reflect genuine fraud prevention or wrongful exclusion. UBIC has repeatedly requested this data from SASSA, over a number of months, to no avail. 

Public resources must be protected from fraud, but equally from administrative systems that prevent eligible people from accessing their rights.ng, they are not fit for purpose and must be radically reformed. 

Are grant “savings” being reallocated to GBV and child stunting?

Perhaps the most cynical tactic used to sell the social grant cuts in the MTBPS has been the suggestion that the “savings” are being redirected to tackle gender based violence (GBV) and child stunting. This is intended to legitimise the cuts—and seeks to leverage righteous public outrage over recent tragic incidents of gender based violence and femicide. These are all urgent priorities. They should not be placed in competition with one another, particularly when social assistance itself helps protect women and children from the very vulnerabilities these interventions seek to address.

First, it is not necessary to cut social assistance to fund these programmes. Tax revenue collection is projected to be R17 billion higher than previously forecast. The primary budget surplus reaches R140 billion this year. The resources are available to meet the needs of the population. The Finance Minister presents spending priorities as “trade-offs”, but he is creating a false dichotomy. These priorities only need to be traded off under a fiscal policy regime which regards debt stabilisation as the supreme goal to which all other objectives must be subordinated. The tragic irony is that spending cuts hamstring our economy and undermine our long-term stability and ability to service debt. Prioritising communities’ needs and developmental objectives would improve our fiscal position. Limiting the fiscal envelope to the point that social assistance and GBV/stunting initiatives are seen as directly in competition is a choice that our leaders have made. They could easily make a different choice. 

Second, cutting social assistance will put people at greater risk of gender based violence and stunting. Research overwhelmingly shows that cash assistance improves women’s economic independence, rendering them less vulnerable to partner violence. It increases their ability to leave abusive situations. The child support grant has repeatedly been shown to protect children from the worst impacts of poverty and is the single most important intervention for improving child nutrition outcomes. Reducing access to the child support grant will likely hurt vulnerable women and children more than the total of R7.2 billion allocated to GBV and stunting programmes will help them. Fiscal discipline cannot be measured by the amount of money withheld from people who depend on public support to survive.

Recommendations to Parliament

The need for social assistance is increasing, not decreasing. The cost of living is rising once again, and unemployment is going up. The consequences for people’s lives, and for the health of our economy, of continuing to take grants away from those who need them, will be felt for generations. 

 

Ultimately, Parliament has the say over the fiscal framework. Our representatives do not have to accept the injustice that is being perpetrated in the social grant system. They can stand up for constitutional rights, fairness and economic alternatives. We make the following demands of Parliament:

• Ensure predictable, medium-term funding for  SRD in the main budget until its successor is implemented
• Disclose, cost, and finance the planned SRD improvements (transition to basic income or ‘livelihoods support’)
• Investigate the SRD underspending and the proposed social grant savings claims, including through human rights impact assessments, distinguishing verified fraud from non-payment, administrative exclusions and failed reviews
• Strike down National Treasury’s conditionality on SASSA’s operating budget which requires SASSA to undertake blanket, unfit-for-purpose income verification and reviews
• Resource SASSA to process all social grant administration and enquiries both in its offices and online in a timely and dignifying manner
• Increase the SRD grant and the CSG to at least the food poverty line, and increase the means-test of the SRD grant to reach more people in poverty
• Restore and mandate regular SASSA statistical reporting
  • Require regular, detailed breakdowns of social grant cancellations which identify exactly how many grant-holder ‘frauds’ have been prosecuted, and break down the reasons for all other cancellations