Sassa paid R1.33bn to people who should not have got grants, down R1bn on last year

The South African Social Security Agency paid R1.33 billion to people who were not eligible for social grants in the financial year that ran from April 2025 to March 2026, the Auditor-General’s office told Parliament this week. That is about R1 billion less than the R2.3 billion recorded in the previous financial year.

As IOL reported on 8 October, the Auditor-General’s office presented the figures to the portfolio committee on social development. The Enquirer is reporting the same findings, with the context a South African reader needs to make sense of them.

The money went to people who were deceased, to government employees earning above the grant threshold, to people on the Government Employees Pension Fund, to applicants with invalid identity documents, and to cases the agency could not substantiate because its database was incomplete.

Puleng Molapo of the Auditor-General’s office told the committee that Sassa relies heavily on what applicants submit when they register, and that the lack of integration between government systems makes verification difficult. Sassa receives Home Affairs data but loads it manually each month, which causes delays.

Molapo said the agency needs to invest in information and communications technology that would allow the systems to talk to each other, so that ineligible individuals can be detected before payment rather than after. He said full integration is unlikely to be a short-term project, but that plans are needed so the same findings do not recur every year.

The breakdown matters more than the headline figure. Payments to deceased beneficiaries rose to R211 million, up from R18.6 million in 2024/25. Payments to government employees came to R266.8 million, roughly flat against R260.7 million the year before. Payments to people with invalid identity documents rose to R18.9 million from R16.4 million. Payments to people on the Government Employees Pension Fund fell to R235.1 million from R246.5 million.

The largest improvement was in the category covering an incomplete database, where payments fell to R604.3 million from R1.776 billion.

Molapo said each million rand lost through these leakages could buy groceries worth R5,500 for 108 vulnerable families in a month. The leakages contributed to Sassa receiving a qualified audit opinion, meaning the Auditor-General could not confirm that the financial statements were free of material misstatement in specific areas.

“We have long reported on pervasive mismanagement or leakage of public funds without consequences and our audit recommendations are not receiving the required attention,” Molapo said.

Committee chairperson Bridget Masango said the qualified opinion was concerning given the department’s responsibility for social protection. “A qualified audit opinion is not an outcome that the committee can accept as business as usual,” she said. She said the weaknesses required urgent intervention to strengthen the integrity of the grants system, and that every rand lost was a rand that could have gone to vulnerable South Africans.

For grant recipients, the practical effect of the findings is indirect but real. The social assistance programme is the largest single line of spending on poor households in South Africa, and money paid to people who should not receive it is money not available for the intended beneficiaries, for the administrative systems that pay them, or for the fiscus generally. Sassa’s own verification weaknesses also mean legitimate applicants can face delays while the agency tries to confirm identity and eligibility.

A qualified audit opinion does not mean the grants stopped or that payments to legitimate beneficiaries were affected. It means the Auditor-General could not satisfy itself on specific areas of the accounts. The committee has asked the department and Sassa to strengthen verification and controls. What happens next depends on whether the integration project Molapo described moves from a plan to a funded, dated programme.

Source: IOL, Sassa paid R1.33bn to ineligible grant recipients in 2025/26, AG finds