Briefing Note: The consequences of National Treasury’s new conditions for social grants

The Universal Basic Income Coalition (UBIC) warns that National Treasury's new conditions for SASSA—including bank account surveillance, database cross-checks, and biometric verification—will erroneously exclude up to half of rightful beneficiaries of the child support, older persons, disability, and care dependency grants. Drawing on evidence from the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant, where 90% of exclusions are estimated to be erroneous, the briefing argues that these measures prioritise fiscal savings over constitutional rights to social assistance and basic nutrition.

• National Treasury has mandated that SASSA apply verification procedures used for the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant to longer-standing grants, including the older persons’ grant, disability grant, child support grant (CSG), and care dependency grant. These procedures include bank account surveillance, cross-checks against government databases (such as SARS, UIF, and NSFAS), and predictive algorithmic profiling for 'fraud risk' requiring biometric verification.
• Evidence from the SRD grant suggests that these verification methods are fundamentally flawed, with an estimated 90% of exclusions being erroneous. While approximately 18.3 million people were eligible for the SRD grant in 2022, only about 8 million receive it monthly, a gap the document attributes to flawed systems used to stay within National Treasury's budget caps.
• The implementation of bank account checks is projected to disproportionately affect women and caregivers. For the Child Support Grant (CSG) alone, it is estimated that 4.1 million children are at risk of erroneous exclusion due to bank verification, as the system cannot distinguish between personal income and funds received for children, such as maintenance payments.
• Database verification is described as inaccurate because government records are not updated in real time. The document cites cases where applicants were rejected for receiving NSFAS or UIF benefits they had not received for years, leading a High Court judge to find the use of these checks for eligibility verification to be 'unconstitutional and unlawful'.
• The biometric verification system presents insurmountable barriers for the most vulnerable. An estimated 57% of the SRD target population lack the capabilities to comply, citing lack of smartphones (17%), lack of internet access (21%), and lack of smart ID cards (36%), the latter of which costs R180.
• National Treasury is requiring SASSA to report quarterly on the 'Rand amount of savings' achieved through grant cancellations. The document argues this incentivizes SASSA to maximize cancellations and rejections rather than focusing on the quality of service delivery or poverty reduction.
• National Treasury has proposed reviewing and potentially reducing the means-test threshold for the Child Support Grant (CSG), possibly capping it or reducing it to the Upper Bound Poverty Line. The document argues this would exclude children in the poorest deciles and violate the constitutional right to basic nutrition.

APA

Institute for Economic Justice (2025). Briefing Note: The consequences of National Treasury’s new conditions for social grants. https://iej.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/UBIC-Briefing-Note-SASSA-conditions.pdf

Chicago

Institute for Economic Justice. Briefing Note: The consequences of National Treasury’s new conditions for social grants. 2025. https://iej.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/UBIC-Briefing-Note-SASSA-conditions.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Institute for Economic Justice |title=Briefing Note: The consequences of National Treasury’s new conditions for social grants |date=6 June 2025 |url=https://iej.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/UBIC-Briefing-Note-SASSA-conditions.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{instituteforeconomicjustice2025briefing, author = {{Institute for Economic Justice}}, title = {{Briefing Note: The consequences of National Treasury’s new conditions for social grants}}, institution = {Institute for Economic Justice}, year = {2025}, month = jun, url = {https://iej.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/UBIC-Briefing-Note-SASSA-conditions.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }