Something went horribly wrong at the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) in 2015. At some stage, a group of consultants, who had been appointed irregularly by social development minister Bathabile Dlamini two years earlier, hijacked plans the agency had been working on to take over social grant distributions from Cash Paymaster Services (CPS). Fast forward to the present. The very real risk of chaotic violence in the first weekend of April has its origins in that 2015 hijacking by a group known to have the backing of Dlamini and assumed to have the backing of President Jacob Zuma. Over the coming months the battle to control the process by which R135bn/year is distributed to about 11m social grant recipients will be a proxy for the battle playing out on the wider political stage.
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