Government must clarify its commitment to social grants

The Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ) expresses concern over contradictions between President Cyril Ramaphosa's promises of a permanent basic income support system and the National Treasury's actions. The IEJ highlights budget cuts in the October 2024 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), the potential migration of other social grants to an exclusionary online-only system, and Treasury's legal claims that the SRD grant was only a temporary Covid-19 response. The organization calls for a clear roadmap to basic income and an end to austerity-driven measures that exclude eligible beneficiaries.

• The October 2024 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) reduced the allocation for social grants by more than R20 billion in 2025 and initially failed to include a specific allocation for the SRD grant in the 2025/26 budget provision, leading to interpretations that the grant would be terminated.
• The National Treasury is proposing to migrate other social grants, such as old-aged and child support grants, to the SRD's online-only application system, which the IEJ describes as massively exclusionary and a step backwards.
• In a Pretoria High Court case, the National Treasury contradicted official government policy by claiming the SRD grant was merely a temporary response to the Covid crisis and that there was no commitment to transition it into a permanent basic income support system.
• Treasury officials have floated a 'workseekers grant' proposal that would require applicants to prove they are actively looking for work, despite research suggesting that attaching job-seeking conditionalities to income support is counterproductive and costly.

APA

Institute for Economic Justice (2024). Government must clarify its commitment to social grants. https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/ubic-statement-government-must-clarify-its-commitment-to-social-grants/

Chicago

Institute for Economic Justice. Government must clarify its commitment to social grants. 2024. https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/ubic-statement-government-must-clarify-its-commitment-to-social-grants/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |author=Institute for Economic Justice |title=Government must clarify its commitment to social grants |date=10 December 2024 |url=https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/ubic-statement-government-must-clarify-its-commitment-to-social-grants/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{instituteforeconomicjustice2024government, author = {{Institute for Economic Justice}}, title = {{Government must clarify its commitment to social grants}}, publisher = {Institute for Economic Justice}, year = {2024}, month = dec, url = {https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/ubic-statement-government-must-clarify-its-commitment-to-social-grants/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }