SA’s R13bn social grant cuts are arbitrary, cruel and economically short-sighted

The Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement cuts R13-billion from social grants, including child support and SRD grants. These reductions will worsen poverty, malnutrition and vulnerability to gender-based violence. Restrictive verification processes exclude eligible recipients, while claims of fraud are used to justify cuts despite available public resources.

Dr Kelle Howson is a senior researcher and project lead in the IEJ’s Social Protection project. She leads the Institute’s high-profile litigation work, challenging exclusion from social protection in South Africa. She has held previous roles as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford and a senior researcher in New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Leader’s Office.

One of the biggest ostensible “successes” of the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) is R13-billion cut from social grants. Half of this comes from the long-standing grants – the child support, disability and older persons’ grants – and half from the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant.

National Treasury claims that this is part of its “targeted and responsible savings” (Tars) programme – and social grants account for the largest share of Tars “savings”. While it may be targeted, it is not responsible, but arbitrary and cruel. The suggestion that these funds are being redirected to gender-based violence (GBV) and child stunting (both dire crises in need of much greater resources) is a cynical PR exercise that does a gross disservice to GBV victims, impoverished children, and social grant holders.

The government can and must increase funding for GBV and stunting prevention – at a level much greater than the paltry MTBPS allocation – but the notion that this should or could come at the expense of existing social assistance is counterproductive and, frankly, appalling.

Despite the framing used by the Treasury’s director-general in the media, the funds cut from social grants have not been specifically redirected to GBV and stunting initiatives – that’s simply not how budgeting works. All public spending comes from the same overall fiscal envelope. Instead, the small new sums allocated for GBV and stunting initiatives are being used rhetorically to legitimise and render palatable cuts to social grants, particularly on the heels of recent tragic events and public outrage on GBV and femicide.

The reality is that more people will be at risk of GBV and malnutrition as a direct result of the cuts to social grants. Research overwhelmingly shows that cash assistance improves women’s economic independence, rendering them less vulnerable to partner violence.

It increases their ability to leave abusive situations. The child support grant has been demonstrated time and again to protect children from the worst impacts of poverty, and is the single most important intervention for improving child nutrition outcomes. Reducing access to the child support grant will probably hurt vulnerable women and children, more than the total of R7.2-billion allocated to GBV and stunting programmes will help them.

The tax revenue forecast has been lifted in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement by R17-billion.