A carer's R2 400 question: SASSA pensioners pay rent first and eat last
Ria Sehannie, who looks after elderly grant recipients, wants the old-age pension raised to R5 000 and landlord charges capped at R1 500. SASSA has not confirmed an October top-up.
An elderly caregiver has described a monthly arithmetic that thousands of South African pensioners recognise: the SASSA old-age grant arrives, the rent goes out first, and whatever is left decides whether there is food.
As The South African reported on 29 September, Ria Sehannie, who works as a carer for elderly beneficiaries, wrote to that publication to describe what she sees. She said pensioners who clearly need help cannot cover food for the month because rent absorbs the grant, and that they end up relying on charity or on scraps from a church.
Her account matches the structure of the benefit. The Older Person’s Grant pays R2 400 a month to beneficiaries aged 60 to 74 and R2 420 to those 75 and older. For a pensioner renting in a township or an inner-city room, a single month’s rent can consume most or all of that before any other cost is considered.
Sehannie’s proposal is specific. She wants the old-age grant raised to R5 000 a month, and she wants the amount a landlord may legally charge a pensioner for rent capped at R1 500. Both figures are hers. Neither has been adopted as policy by the Department of Social Development, which sets grant levels, and the department has not responded to the proposal.
What a South African reader will notice is the timing. SASSA has delivered a small October top-up to pensioners in each of the past two years, R10 in October 2024 and R10 again in October 2025. As things stand, no top-up for the Older Person’s Grant has been confirmed for October 2026, which would break a two-year pattern.
That R10 is worth stating plainly. It is not a raise in the grant. It is a once-off addition on top of the monthly amount, and at R10 it is smaller than a single loaf of bread at most retailers. Its significance is less financial than procedural: it signalled that an increase was still being considered in a given year.
The larger question the caregiver’s letter raises is one the grant system was not designed to answer. The old-age grant is a poverty-alleviation payment, not a housing subsidy. It is set against the national cost of living, not against the rental market in any particular area. Where a pensioner rents privately, the grant and the rent are decided by two different systems that do not speak to each other, and the pensioner carries the difference.
Capping what a landlord may charge a pensioner would require legislation that does not exist. South Africa has no general rent control for residential leases, and the Rental Housing Act governs the relationship between landlord and tenant rather than setting a ceiling on what may be charged. Any such cap would be a new policy decision, and it would raise its own questions about who bears the shortfall.
Raising the grant to R5 000 would be a different kind of decision. The old-age grant is the largest single line in the social assistance budget by number of beneficiaries, and an increase of that size would apply to every one of them. Whether that is affordable is a question the National Treasury answers, and it has not been asked to answer it here.
What is not in dispute is what the caregiver described. Rent first, food second, medication and other basics last. For people who spent a working life paying tax into the system, that order of things is the part that is hardest to reconcile.
Source: The South African, Caregiver shares struggles of SASSA old-age pensioners
