Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has told Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini that her plan to extend a contract with a unit of Net1 UEPS Technologies would be "unlawful", according to a letter Bloomberg has seen. On February 1, the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), which Dlamini is responsible for, told Parliament that the only viable option to ensure that 17.2-million people kept getting their payments in April in the R139.5bn a year programme would be to extend the Net1 contract that expires at the end of March. That contract has been declared invalid by the Constitutional Court because of concerns over how it was awarded, and extending it would need the court to overturn its 2013 decision. "Sassa’s proposed interim agreement with Cash Paymaster Services will not be lawful," Gordhan said in a letter to Dlamini dated February 1. "The options proposed by the Sassa team cannot be supported unless the Constitutional Court were to approve such an option."
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