How to solve Sassa mess

Watching the standing committee on public accounts session in Parliament with the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) and the South African Post Office (Sapo) brought a couple of points to mind.

First, nothing was done for seven months but progress was made in one day when Sassa was ordered to do so by the committee. This points to one cause for the debacle — a lack of political will. For that we can only look to the responsible minister, Bathabile Dlamini, but let's focus on solving the problem first.

There are only 100 working days left until the Constitutional Court deadline. Sassa will not make the deadline, of that I am certain. The systems may be simple, as Sapo’s Mark Barnes has stated, but the devil lies in the logistics and that is what will take time.

Given the high likelihood of failure, the strategic national importance of the project, the devastating consequences that will come with failure and the fact that the same people who failed to succeed in the past are still running with the project, I would suggest they start thinking differently. One way out of the mess is to license, lease or buy the Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) systems and processes (not CPS itself), then bring them into Sapo to operate them.

There is (I think) just enough time to do that properly if they start with it in the next week.

The CPS systems are proven, the risks are low and we will still achieve our goal of autonomy for the state. The costs might be higher in the short term, but it will buy time to design, build and test our own systems that can be implemented in the medium term and to do so properly.

As to the matter of negotiating with CPS in this regard, that would be simple. It is operating illegally and is at least partially responsible for the mess, so it would be easy to bring judicial and/or political pressure to bear when negotiating. That is the only realistic way out of this mess.

James Drew

Via e-mail