Using social grant beneficiaries as political footballs? (Part 1)
A popular argument in some right-wing circles in the post-apartheid era is that the governing ANC has deliberately impeded job creation in order to keep black South Africans dependent on social grants and thereby make them more likely to vote for the ANC. The logic behind this argument does not add up, and the available evidence does not support it either. (There have been many sincere efforts to create jobs by successive ANC-appointed administrations – they have just been relatively unsuccessful). However, it does raise the point that social grant recipients and beneficiaries are a very large proportion of the electorate, so influencing their political views could significantly impact electoral results.
In previous posts, two presentations to Parliament and one academic seminar, I have drawn attention to a bizarre effort by the ANC-appointed Minister of Finance and his Director General in the National Treasury to cut a major social grant immediately before the 2024 election. This was proposed in the Budget tabled in February 2023, but subsequently withdrawn. Although I believe the extension of the grant is justified on equity grounds – unemployed adults receive hardly any direct income support – it is possible to make coherent arguments against it. The really puzzling thing, then, was the proposed timing. To cut a grant for working age adults immediately before an election looks like deliberate sabotage. But why would the ANC seek to sabotage itself? I answer that question in my post on ‘The most important thing you need to know about the 2024 election’.
In this article I want to briefly talk about what appears to be the reincarnation of that effort – after the initial proposal failed. And in particular I want to consider what we can learn from the complicity of ‘civil society organisations’ (Black Sash, SPII, IEJ, Section27, #PaytheGrants, BudgetJusticeCoalition, AIDC, OpenSecrets and various others) that are normally very vocal on such issues.
The reincarnation of the attempt to use grant beneficiaries as political footballs has come in the form of shutting down social grant payment points operated by the Post Office. In the schedule published earlier this year, all the Post Office payment points would be closed by the end of April – just in time for the election on 29 May: an intriguing coincidence. There has been remarkably little public information or engagement on this decision, so it is unclear how many grant recipients stand to be affected. Although likely to be far less than cancellation of the SRD Grant, it seems reasonable to assume that it could be somewhere between a hundred thousand and millions. (One source suggests government argued ‘only’ 100,000 recipients would be affected).
Since this decision is part of the liquidation process for the Post Office, so some might argue that it is outside of government and ANC control. But that is not true, because the National Treasury has final say on whether additional funding could be provided to this state-owned entity to keep grant payment points open. It would have been a conscious and deliberate decision to withhold such funding despite the negative consequences for many of the poorest South Africans. And the amount of funding required would be, frankly, pocket change by the standards of the fiscal allocations made by Treasury for other uses. While the numbers have not been made public, I doubt the net cost of retaining those functions would be more than a few hundred million. Contrast that to the tens of billions National Treasury is pouring into ineffective, inequality-promoting tax incentives. In short: the available evidence points to the closure of grant payment points as being driven by the same individuals as were involved in proposing to end the SRD grant. And the timing of both proposed actions is virtually identical.
In the case of the proposal to end the SRD Grant, CSOs that traditionally advocate for ‘social justice’ did eventually raise their voices to oppose that, albeit somewhat more belatedly than usual. However, with this second and more subtle initiative these CSOs have been entirely silent in the crucial months leading up to the closures and during the implementation of those closures. It is completely implausible that this is some accidental omission. The CSO Black Sash, for instance, was previously involved in producing research and a documentary it launched in 2023 on the costs incurred by grant recipients to collect grants even when the Post Office payment points existed. Black Sash continues to claim that it is actively involved in promoting the well-being of poor and marginalised South Africans and has been involved in various campaigns about a Basic Income Grant or Universal Basic Income but has been consistently silent in the pre-election period on the closure of the Post Office payment points. (The only exception over this period appears to have been a single regional manager quoted in this article around the time of the 2024 Budget).
What is most striking is that Black Sash is not an isolated case: all the CSOs that traditionally do advocacy on social grants have been silent about these closures. The opposition Democratic Alliance, not traditionally known for being vocal on social grant issues, has been more vocal than these CSOs. Here is a non-exhaustive list: the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ), Section27, the Alternative Information and Development Campaign (AIDC), Studies in Poverty and Inequality (SPII), OpenSecrets, the Budget Justice Coalition (BJC, which incorporates some of the previously-mentioned CSOs), #PaytheGrants (also includes previously-mentioned CSOs). All of them have been silent. It appears completely implausible that this is a mere omission or coincidence.
In Part 2 I provide a theory as to why these CSOs may be staying silent, referencing evidence of funding sources, political motives and other considerations.
In Part 3 I will zoom in on the IEJ, which is currently litigating against the State to increase the value and scale of the SRD Grant. All of these will contribute to the bigger picture that I will pull together in my final articles on this topic in the week before the election.