A 54-year-old on the R370 grant says the money runs out before month-end, and he is worried about pensioners

A 54-year-old man in KwaZulu-Natal who lives on the Social Relief of Distress grant says the R370 does not last the month, and that the South Africans he worries about most are the pensioners running households on their own grants.

He shared his account through The South African’s SASSA grant survey, and the publication reported it on 3 November. He asked to remain anonymous. The Enquirer has not independently interviewed him and reports his circumstances as he described them.

He has relied on the SRD grant for between one and three years, spends it mainly on food and groceries, and says nothing remains by month-end. He shares a family home with three to five dependants. In the past month, someone in his household went without food. He has also faced late or missing payments, and he rated SASSA’s communication with recipients as very poor. He tried to apply for additional government support and was either declined or gave up.

Despite that, he turned the conversation to elderly South Africans. “Many people are relying on SASSA grants, from the unemployed to the elderly,” he said. “We are very grateful for these grants, although they are not much. I think we need to be grateful that we are receiving them, but the government needs to consider the old people.”

He questioned how older recipients manage as costs rise. “How are they to manage on these amounts. In most cases they run a household with their grant and with the cost of living it is very hard,” he said.

The old-age grant pays more than the SRD. A pensioner’s monthly payment is several times the R370 distress grant, and it is the largest single grant line SASSA administers. In households where a pension is the only income, that money is routinely stretched across children and grandchildren, which is the arrangement he describes. The SRD, by contrast, is a poverty-relief payment for people aged 18 to 59 who are not receiving another grant and have no income. It is not a household grant, and it was never sized to carry one.

Unemployment is his biggest financial concern. He holds a matric and has experience in construction and general labour, and he is looking for work. Asked what he would change about SASSA, he said he would increase the grant amount.

The R370 figure is the payment amount, not a measure of what a household needs. For a family of four or five, it buys food for part of a month. For the pensioners he describes, the old-age grant does more of the work and still meets the same problem, which is that one payment is being asked to cover a household.

His is one account, gathered through a survey that invites grant recipients to tell their stories and offers a R2 000 draw for taking part. It is not a sample of grant recipients and it does not establish how widespread his circumstances are. What it does show is the arithmetic he is describing, and the question he puts to government about the people older than him.