Former DG says Sassa is ‘years away’ from finding a solution

The former director-general of the department of social development, headed by Bathabile Dlamini, quit his job over the the management of the processes around the grants payment saga.

Zane Dangor told eNCA on Saturday morning that the reason he had tendered his resignation on Friday was over the management of the legal issues around the SA Social Security Agency’s (Sassa’s) legal obligations to the Constitutional Court.

He had only been in the job for a few months. The previous DG left in November. Dangor had been an adviser to Dlamini since 2010.

He said he was unhappy with “general issues around the submission of papers to the Constitutional Court”.

“The only disagreement we’ve been having is around the processes on the 1st of April. It reached a peak over the past week. We haven’t been on the same page on this issue … about what needs to happen when the [CPS] contract comes to an end.]”

It was announced on Friday by Dlamini’s spokesperson Lumka Oliphant that an agreement on Sassa payments was reached with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), the company that was illegally awarded a tender years ago to dispense social grant payments.

He said he was “glad” if payments could be made on April 1, but he remained concerned about “legality”.

“It’s really unfortunate that Sassa could not come to a solution that excluded CPS much earlier. In terms of who dropped the ball, I must say it lies with the previous leadership in Sassa, working on quite an elaborate takeover project that just took too long … also there was a tender that wasn’t compliant … because people didn’t come forward.”

He said he would not take personal responsibility because he’d only been involved in the Sassa issue in August “after assurances from people that we are really on track … which turned out we were a few years away from a solution”.

Following Dlamini and Sassa taking no substantive action after the Constitutional Court ordered them in 2014 to find a new service provider by April 1 2017, Sassa admitted to parliament this week that they had no plan in place to ensure grant beneficiaries get their payments next month.

It also emerged that they had ignored legal advice to throw themselves on the mercy of the court after having not acted in good faith towards both the Constitutional Court and parliament.

It became clear that the only company with the capacity to continue the payments was CPS, which then demanded more money to continue doing the job.

If a new deal could not be negotiated, Sassa said it might even have to resort to cash trucks to ensure recipients get their money.

Oliphant said in a statement on Friday evening that the minister and the company had “reached an agreement after they were locked up in intense negotiations for three days”.

She said the minister would announce the nature of this agreement soon and “details of the announcement will be communicated in due course”.

Dangor said he was not sure what his next career move would be. “I’ll see what happens over the next few months. I haven’t planned anything.”

Parliament’s watchdog body Scopa said it was angered to see Dangor go, heaping praise on him as a public servant. They said in a statement that Dlamini’s heavy-handed approach had interfered in administrative matters.

They want Dlamini to account for it on Tuesday.

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