What you need to know about Sassa’s grant review process

The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) has provided an update on its ongoing social grant review process, aimed at strengthening the effectiveness, reliability and integrity of South Africa’s social assistance system. Kempton Expressreportsthat, at the beginning of the 2025/2026 financial year, Sassa introduced a range of measures to improve compliance with social assistance regulations and ensure that grants are paid only to eligible beneficiaries. The review process also seeks to prevent wasteful expenditure at a time when government finances remain under pressure.

According to Sassa, the review programme is closely monitored by National Treasury, which has set specific conditions to support the accelerated implementation of reviews. These conditions include income verification, biometric checks, inter-agency data cross-referencing and quarterly reporting. Sassa said these measures are intended to enhance service delivery, improve operational efficiency and safeguard the social grant system against fraud and misuse of public funds.

The agency has thanked beneficiaries who have co-operated with the process and presented themselves for grant reviews. Legally, the review process is guided by Regulation 30 and Section 14(5) of the Social Assistance Act, 2004, which requires Sassa to regularly review grants to confirm continued eligibility. Beneficiaries are also legally obliged to report any material changes in their circumstances, including income, marital status or employment.

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Despite operational pressures, Sassa said it continues to strengthen risk-mitigation mechanisms and modernise the social grants system. This includes the rollout of compulsory biometric enrolment for all new grant applications, life certification for identified beneficiaries and targeted reviews of specific beneficiary groups. To ease pressure on local offices, Sassa has introduced a self-service portal, allowing beneficiaries to complete life certification remotely through the e-Life Certification system.

The agency plans to progressively expand review services on self-service platforms to improve accessibility and convenience. For the current financial year, Sassa planned to conduct 420 000 grant reviews. To date, approximately 240 000 grants have been reviewed, with about 70 000 suspended due to failure to comply with the review process.

Sassa has strengthened partnerships with credit bureaus, banks, SARS, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) and other government entities to improve income verification and means testing. Through data matching with credit bureaus, Sassa can identify discrepancies where beneficiaries declare unemployment or no income but later disclose employment to financial institutions when applying for loans or credit. In collaboration with SARS, nearly 495 296 clients were identified through income verification processes as potentially ineligible for grants. Verification has commenced, and most affected beneficiaries have been notified to present themselves for review.

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