Basic income grant: Civil society organisations accuse Ramaphosa of failing

Civil society organisations have welcomed the extension of the R350 Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant, but also highlighted some concerns.

President Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed during the State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Thursday that the R350 Covid-19 grant would be extended by another year.

“Since the onset of Covid-19, the Social Relief of Distress grant has provided support to more than 10 million unemployed people who were most vulnerable to the impact of the pandemic,” Ramaphosa said.

“As much as it has had a substantial impact, we must recognise that we face extreme fiscal constraints. A fiscal crisis would hurt the poor worst of all through the deterioration of the basic services on which they rely.

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“Mindful of the proven benefits of the grant, we will extend the R350 SRD grant for one further year, to the end of March 2023,” the president added.

Ramaphosa first announced the special grant in April 2020 as part of the government’s R500 billion stimulus package, after Covid-19 hit South Africa’s shores.

The SRD grant was introduced and aimed at those aged between 18 and 59 years old, without any source of income support, and those facing undue hardships due to unemployment during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Poverty line

Civil society organisation Amandla.mobi welcomed the extension, but expressed its dissatisfaction that Ramaphosa did not increase the grant.

“[The] president has agreed to extend the R350 SRD grant by 12 months, but he failed to increase [the] grant [and] give R350 to more people,” the civil society organisation said in a tweet.

The organisation also said the president not only failed to implement a basic income grant immediately, but he also did not commit to keeping the Covid-19 grant until it is introduced.

“While [Ramaphosa] did not commit to keeping R350 until it is turned into basic income support, he said they will have ongoing conversations with community-based organisations,” it added.

READ MORE: South Africans can’t live on grants alone, need sustainability

Meanwhile, Black Sash again called for the special grant to be adopted in the social assistance legal framework until a basic income grant is phased in.

“With the national state of disaster ending soon, the R350 SRD grant must now urgently be introduced into the social assistance legal framework to ensure uninterrupted payment to the recipients who depend on this grant as their only source of income and ensure its transition to permanent social assistance for those between 18 and 59 years with little to no income,” the organisation’s national advocacy manager Hoodah Abrahams-Fayker told Daily Maverick.

 Black Sash has long maintained that the R350 grant is not enough to prevent hunger and poverty in South Africa.

The organisation has recommended that the grant be aligned with the upper-bound poverty line of R1,268 or, at the very least, adjusted to the food poverty line of R624 in the interim.

Basic income grant

Meanwhile, Ramaphosa also said during his speech that government still intends to implement a basic income grant in South Africa.

“During this time, we will engage in broad consultations and detailed technical work to identify the best options to replace [the Covid-19] grant.

“Any future support must pass the test of affordability, and must not come at the expense of basic services or at the risk of unsustainable spending.

“It remains our ambition to establish a minimum level of support for those in greatest need,” he said.

The president – alongside Social Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu – met with a number of civil society organisations last month to discuss possible policy pathways to the introduce the basic income grant.

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Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana previously indicated government’s interventions with regards to the basic income grant and social security net would be provided in the February 2022 Budget Speech.

Godongwana revealed this during his maiden Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) in October last year.

At the time, the finance minister said approximately 27.8 million citizens in the country were social grant recipients, which represented about 46% of the population.