Minister, CPS to square off in appeal

SOCIAL Development Minister Susan Shabangu will square off with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in her bid to prove that deductions made in the past from social grant recipients were “illegal and unlawful”.

Shabangu is appealing a 2017 Pretoria High Court ruling that found Grindrod Bank, in handling the social grants of over 16 million recipients on CPS’s behalf, had acted legally in allowing companies to make deductions from social grant recipients.

In his ruling, Acting Judge Cornelius van der Westhuizen found Grindrod had operated on the same level as other commercial banks, saying “the processing of a debit order entails compliance on the part of Grindrod or (any) other bank, with an instruction from an account holder to pay a third party, and is effected only if sufficient funds are in the account”.

“It is clear that once the grant is transferred into the recipient’s account at Grindrod, it operates as any bank account of any commercial banking institution,” Judge Van der Westhuizen said.

He also dismissed the bid by the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) for leave to appeal, including the bid by Black Sash and six others to join the main application as friends of the court.

In light of the ruling, Sassa, Shabangu and Black Sash were expected to deliver oral arguments in the SCA today to reverse his findings. In her papers, Shabangu asked the SCA to overturn the ruling, arguing that “accounts held at Grindrod by grant beneficiaries are special accounts”.