Access to social grants is not a privilege, it is a basic right. No one should have to pay for the right to stand in line. Reports of queue spots being sold outside Sassa offices, as published in yesterday’s paper, point to a disturbing trend of opportunists taking advantage of the cracks in government systems to exploit the most needy and vulnerable.
At the heart of this practice lies a cruel contradiction: those who are most dependent on state support, the poor, the elderly and the disabled, are being forced to pay simply to access it. This is not a convenience fee. It is the monetisation of desperation.
Yet some are being compelled to hand over cash for a place in a queue that should not exist in the first place. Even more troubling are reports of elderly and disabled applicants arriving as early as 5am, or waiting overnight, to secure assistance. This is not just an inconvenience; it is a direct risk to their health, safety and dignity.
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For a system designed to provide relief, this is an unacceptable burden. The exploitation, however, does not occur in a vacuum. Sassa has, for too long, allowed inefficiencies, long queues and poor crowd management to persist.
In doing so, it has created the conditions for opportunists to step in and profit. This reflects a broader and deeply concerning pattern in South Africa: where service delivery falters and enforcement is weak, informal, and often exploitative, systems take hold. It is not enough to push recipients towards digital systems, ignoring that many cannot afford internet access or are too old or frail to use them. No one should have to pay for access to dignity.
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