Statement on Treasury and Presidency Proposed SRD Grant Replacements

The Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ) criticizes proposals by South Africa's National Treasury and Presidency to replace the R350 Covid-19 SRD grant. The IEJ argues that Treasury's plan is designed to maximize exclusion through complex categorizations and conditionalities, such as job-seeking requirements, which ignore structural unemployment. The statement warns that these changes could reduce the number of beneficiaries from the current level to approximately 5.5 million, effectively removing support for millions of poor citizens. The IEJ also condemns the government's failure to engage with civil society coalitions in the development of these policies.

• The National Treasury's proposals seek to replace the SRD grant with a complex system that categorizes the poor into three groups: "extreme poor/multiple constraints", "poor/some constraints", and "less poor/fewer constraints". This system would remove income support entirely for the "less poor" category and introduce a web of interventions for the others.
• Treasury's preference for a jobseekers' grant, likely influenced by a 2021 World Bank proposal, is criticized for assuming jobs are available despite structural unemployment and for adding bureaucratic layers that could lead to mass exclusions, similar to the 5 million people excluded after conditionalities were introduced in April 2022.
• The proposed household grant is viewed as anti-poor because it targets household heads rather than individuals, which would reduce the total number of beneficiaries, limit women's autonomy, and increase the risk of corruption due to the lack of a fixed definition of a household in South Africa.
• The combined impact of a restricted caregivers' grant (limited to those with children under 2) and a jobseekers' grant could limit the total number of beneficiaries to around 5.5 million, which is approximately half of the SRD grant beneficiaries as of March 2022.
• The IEJ asserts that the government's claim that the SRD grant is 'unaffordable' is a political choice, noting that over R200 billion in tax overruns are being used to reduce debt instead of extending income support.

APA

Institute for Economic Justice (2022). Statement on Treasury and Presidency Proposed SRD Grant Replacements. https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/statement-treasury-and-presidency-proposed-srd-grant-replacements/

Chicago

Institute for Economic Justice. Statement on Treasury and Presidency Proposed SRD Grant Replacements. 2022. https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/statement-treasury-and-presidency-proposed-srd-grant-replacements/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |author=Institute for Economic Justice |title=Statement on Treasury and Presidency Proposed SRD Grant Replacements |date=7 September 2022 |url=https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/statement-treasury-and-presidency-proposed-srd-grant-replacements/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{instituteforeconomicjustice2022statement, author = {{Institute for Economic Justice}}, title = {{Statement on Treasury and Presidency Proposed SRD Grant Replacements}}, publisher = {Institute for Economic Justice}, year = {2022}, month = sep, url = {https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/statement-treasury-and-presidency-proposed-srd-grant-replacements/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }