Mamela, Zuma, it is a crisis and your ministers keep

“There is no crisis,” President Jacob Zuma keeps saying.

More than R10-billion is paid out in social welfare grants every month. For most beneficiaries those payments are the difference between basic sustenance and hunger. Yet, with just two weeks to go until government’s existing contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) expires, the welfare of 17-million South Africans is Assembly on Thursday that he can’t be expected to act against Dlamini just yet. “Why punish someone before anything happens? This is another kind of democracy that if you expect someone is going to make a mistake or is going to fail, that person must be punished before it happens. It’s a funny democracy,” Zuma said.

It is the Bill of Rights underpinning our democracy that dictates the state must progressively realise the socioeconomic rights of citizens, including the right to social security. Social grants are one such effort towards realising those rights. It is an effort towards a more just and equitable society, which is the foundation of a democratic South Africa.

How did we get here, prone to the confluence of individual incompetence and systemic arrogance?

It is a basic competency of a public official, which we hasten to remind Dlamini she is, to ensure the agency she is responsible for is equipped to serve its primary functions.

The South African Social Security Agency Act of 2004 says the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) must “ensure the provision of comprehensive social security services against vulnerability and pov-