ANDILE KHUMALO: Inertia will cost Sassa: CPS holds the winning hand
'How did you go bankrupt," Bill asked. "Two ways," said Mike. "Gradually and then suddenly."
'How did you go bankrupt," Bill asked. "Two ways," said Mike. "Gradually and then suddenly." This exchange, from Ernest Hemingway's novel, The Sun Also Rises, is perhaps the most poetic assessment of the crisis unfolding in the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa). The agency, as the custodian of social grant payments, faces a dilemma over how grants will be paid from April 1. In South Africa, more than 30% of the population - about 17million people - receive various social grants available to marginalised citizens. In a country that is so paralysed by massive inequalities, social grants are the most direct transfer of wealth from the better-off to those stuck on the fringes of the economy. For beneficiaries, grants are their only source of income. The provision of grants is therefore a moral imperative for taxpayers - no matter how burdensome it may feel.Due to the large number of people who depend on the grants, the social security net is by far the biggest line item in th...
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