The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) has turned to the Constitutional Court at the 11th hour, asking it to extend a social grants distribution contract it invalidated in 2014. In its papers, the agency has finally admitted that it does not have the capacity to distribute the social grants and says the payments thereof will be in jeopardy come April 1 if the court turns down its urgent application. Sassa also concedes that its efforts to petition the Treasury for a condonation have failed. Sassa has also ruled out all other options to distribute the social grants, including roping in the country’s major banks, insisting that only a Cash Paymaster Systems (CPS) contract extension will do.The development comes as Sassa officials admitted in Parliament on Tuesday that the agency had no plan in place to distribute more than 17-million social grants to more than 11-million beneficiaries other than to extend Net1 subsidiary CPS’s contract. But South African Post Office (Sapo) C...
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