Sassa paid R1.33bn in grants to people who were not eligible, Auditor-General finds

Sassa paid R1.33bn in social grants to people who were not eligible to receive them between April 2025 and March 2026, the Auditor-General’s office told Parliament’s social development portfolio committee this week.

The payments went to deceased beneficiaries, to government employees earning salaries above the grant threshold, to people on the Government Employees Pension Fund, and to people with invalid identity documents. In each case the money left the agency’s accounts and reached somebody the grant was not meant for.

“We see payments made after death, meaning the beneficiary is deceased. We have seen payments made to invalid IDs. We’ve seen people who are on Persal, who are already earning salaries within government but are also withdrawing social grants on that specific regard,” the AG’s Puleng Molapo told the committee.

“We’ve seen people on Government Employees Pension Fund and we’ve seen incomplete database where we could not substantiate whether the specific individual should be paid,” he said.

As IOL reported on 8 October, the figure is a reduction on the previous year, when the agency paid R2.3bn to ineligible beneficiaries. That is a fall of about R1bn.

The breakdown matters more than the headline number, because the components moved in opposite directions. Payments to deceased individuals rose to R211m from R18.6m the year before. Payments to government employees rose slightly to R266.8m from R260.7m. Payments to people with invalid identity documents rose to R18.9m from R16.4m. Payments to people on the Government Employees Pension Fund fell to R235.1m from R246.5m.

The largest single improvement came in the category the presentation describes as an incomplete database, where the agency could not establish whether a person should have been paid at all. That fell to R604.3m from R1.776bn.

Why the agency cannot check on its own

Molapo told the committee that Sassa relies heavily on what applicants submit when they register as beneficiaries, and that a lack of integration between government systems makes some of that information difficult to verify.

Sassa does have access to the Home Affairs database, but the agency loads it manually, month by month. Molapo said that causes delays in the system.

His recommendation to the committee was an investment in information and communications technology that would allow the systems to talk to each other, so that a deceased person, a serving public servant or an invalid identity number can be flagged before a payment runs rather than after an audit finds it.

“We are saying we need to get to a point where we are fully integrated, taking into consideration that the integration might not be a short-term plan, but we need to have plans in terms of how are we going best deal with this specific issue, so that we don’t find ourselves in the same position year in and year out,” he said.

The stakes are concrete. Molapo said that on the AG’s own analysis, each million rand lost through these leakages could buy groceries worth R5,500 for 108 vulnerable families in a month.

The leakages contributed to a qualified audit opinion for the entity. Molapo told the committee that the office has reported on mismanagement and leakage of public funds without consequences for a long time, and that its audit recommendations are not receiving the attention they require.

Committee chairperson Bridget Masango said the qualified opinion was concerning, particularly given the department’s responsibility for administering social protection programmes and safeguarding public resources.

“A qualified audit opinion is not an outcome that the committee can accept as business as usual. We are concerned that weaknesses in the system continue to expose public funds to wastage, particularly where payments are made to people who are no longer eligible to receive social grants,” she said. She said the problem required urgent intervention to strengthen the integrity of the grants system.

“Every rand lost through weaknesses in the system is a rand that could otherwise be directed towards supporting vulnerable South Africans. The department and SASSA must strengthen their verification and control systems to ensure that public funds reach the people for whom they are intended,” Masango said.

Social grants are the main source of income for roughly a quarter of South African households, and the old age grant, the disability grant and the child support grant are paid out monthly to more than 18 million beneficiaries. A rand that reaches a deceased person’s account or a public servant’s salary is a rand that does not reach the queue at the pay point.

The committee has now had the audit outcomes placed in front of it by the office that produced them, and the chairperson has said the weaknesses need urgent attention. What the committee does with that, and whether the integration Molapo asked for appears in a plan with a date attached, is the next thing to watch.

The Enquirer will follow the committee’s processing of the audit outcomes and the agency’s response to the findings.

Source: IOL, Sassa paid R1.33bn in grants to ineligible beneficiaries, AG finds