A tragedy brewing for all SA

ONE wonders what good story will there be to tell if the grant system falls apart? The ANC should be anxious as all South Africans are about the pending crisis.

If there is one good story the ruling party has under its belt, it is the paying of almost 17 million social grants to recipients, especially in our unequal society.

Even when Jacob Zuma bores the nation with this fact in his speeches, the truth of it cannot be ignored. It is one fact the president can read without fumbling the numbers. And rightly so.

Now grants hang in the balance because of incompetence, laziness and failure to understand the ramifications this will have. It is putting the country in a dangerous position.

If Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini’s hostile press conference was intended to allay our fears as a nation, it did the complete opposite.

There she was, the woman who South Africans have come to see as spending more time campaigning for Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to occupy the highest seat of the land than on her job. She actually has no control of her basic responsibility of ensuring millions of South Africans get their cash support on time come April 1.

Why she and her spokesperson, Lumka Oliphant, called a press conference without being prepared to give the details of how the grants would be paid baffles any thinking and concerned South African.

Both the minister and Oliphant came with a one-way mission to tell us their viewpoint without wanting to engage the media, and by extension the public, on their concerns about issues surrounding the crisis, the sudden resignation of department director-general Zane Dangor on Friday, and the Treasury’s apparent conflict of interest in refusing to pay for an unconstitutional deal between Cash Paymaster Services and the Social Development Department.

With all these factors, simply saying, “The Department of Social Development and Sassa would like to reassure social grant beneficiaries that they will get their social grants on April 1, 2017” without giving details of how they will be paid oozes arrogance of the “trust me” kind rather than being accountable to the South African public.

eNCA journalist Karyn Maughan was correct to inform the minister that a constitutional democracy does not work like that.

The minister had no concrete plans to tell the public of how grants would be reaching the most vulnerable in our society.

The conference gave credence that there is no care for the ramifications this will have not only on the beneficiaries, but on South Africa as a whole, including the ANC.

For one, the ruling party is gambling with its remaining collateral especially with its rural electoral stronghold.

But if the worst happens and grants are not paid on time, it is not only going to affect rural households but also their families that might reside in urban settings.

Families that have first graduates will have to send money home to help their kin survive.

People will know which family members live on grants and there is the shame it will induce.

The electorate – suburban or rural – will not forgive this blunder.

Extending an unconstitutional agreement between the department and Cash Paymaster Services will continue to erode the trust in the ruling party, that it understands constitutional democracy.

And if the worst happens, that this pending disaster results in one or two weeks delay in payment of grants, the electorate will not forget. For a ruling party already skating on thin ice with its battle to retain power in 2019, even the faithful rural voters will not forget this blunder if the grants are not paid on April 1.

This is a tragedy in waiting for the ruling party.