Sassa saga aftermath could be more catastrophic than imagined – Mogoeng

The fallout from the ongoing SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) saga “could be more catastrophic than we have the capacity to imagine”, Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng said on Wednesday.

Mogoeng was responding to the Black Sash Trust’s submission to the Constitutional Court requesting it to exercise its supervisory jurisdiction to ensure the payments of social grants to 17 million citizens when Cash Paymaster Services’ (CPS) contract with the grants agency expires in about two weeks.

The ConCourt declared the contract constitutionally invalid in 2014.

The contract ends on March 31, and negotiations for a new contract between the parties have been stopped by a ministerial task team, which said these discussions could only take place with the approval of National Treasury.

Mogoeng said there seemed to be two options available to the court to ensure the payments of grants on April 1.

He said the court could issue an order for Sassa to negotiate a new contract with any service provider, but at the risk that the parties would not agree on the terms of the contract.

The second option is the ConCourt extending the CPS contract in the same way it had declared it invalid, assuming the court has the power to do so.