SASSA paid R1.33bn to dead people, state workers and invalid IDs
The Auditor-General told Parliament the agency's R1bn improvement on last year still included R211m paid to deceased beneficiaries, up from R18.6m
SASSA paid R1.33 billion in social grants to people who were not entitled to them in the 2025/26 financial year, the Auditor-General’s office told Parliament’s portfolio committee on social development this week.
The payments went to deceased beneficiaries, to government employees earning above the grant threshold, to holders of invalid identity numbers, and to people whose records could not be substantiated because the database was incomplete. IOL reported the figures on 8 October.
Puleng Molapo of the Auditor-General’s office set out the categories in his evidence to the committee. “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,” he said.
The presentation to the committee breaks the R1.33bn down by category. R211 million went to deceased individuals, up from R18.6 million in 2024/25. R266.8 million went to government employees, against R260.7 million the year before. R18.9 million went to people with invalid IDs, up from R16.4 million. R235.1 million went to people on the Government Employees Pension Fund, down from R246.5 million.
The largest single reduction was in payments made despite an incomplete database, which fell from R1.776 billion in 2024/25 to R604.3 million.
That fall is the main reason the total dropped by about R1 billion, from R2.3 billion in 2024/25 to R1.33 billion in the year under review.
Why the agency cannot see who it is paying
Molapo told the committee that SASSA relies heavily on what applicants submit when they register, and that a lack of integration between government systems makes it difficult to verify that information. He said the agency needs to invest in information and communications technology so that the systems can be joined up and individual cases flagged.
SASSA sits on the Home Affairs database, but the records are loaded manually each month, which Molapo said causes delays. He told the committee that full integration is unlikely to be a short-term project, and that there needs to be a plan so that the same findings do not recur every year.
He also put a human figure on the leakages. On the Auditor-General’s analysis, each million rand lost in this way could buy groceries worth R5,500 for 108 vulnerable families a month.
The consequence for the agency is a qualified audit opinion. Molapo said the Auditor-General’s office has reported on mismanagement and leakage of public funds without consequences for a long time, and that its recommendations are not receiving the attention they require.
Bridget Masango, who chairs the committee, said the qualified opinion could not be treated 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 called for urgent work to strengthen the integrity of the grants system and for the department and SASSA to tighten verification and controls so that the money reaches the people it is meant for.
For grant recipients, the practical effect of this story is not a change to their payments. The figures describe money that left the system to people who should not have received it, and the audit finding is a measure of how well the state can check who is claiming. The committee has now put the verification failures on the record in Parliament, and SASSA’s own systems are the subject of the Auditor-General’s recommendation.
Source: IOL, Sassa pays over R1.3bn in social grants to ineligible beneficiaries
