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One of the most pernicious lies told about the Democratic Alliance is that if the DA wins national government, social grants will be taken away.
One voter once put it to me with painful clarity: “Mandela gave me Sassa [the South African Social Security Agency], and the ANC says you will take it away.”
That sentence captures the political architecture of the past 30 years. Social grants, which should be a constitutional instrument of dignity, have been turned into an instrument of fear. Millions are told that the support they receive from the state belongs not to them, but to the party in power.
The ANC’s subjugation message is that the most needy and vulnerable in society have to stay loyal and dependent for their social grant to be safe.
It is deplorable dependency politics.
So to leave no doubt about the DA’s position: social grants will not be taken away under a DA-led government. They will be protected. They will be paid reliably. And they will be made sustainable by the reforms the ANC has failed to implement.
The real actual threat to social grants...is the current ANC corruption, low growth, collapsing administration and reckless public finances.
— Geordin Hill-Lewis
A decent society does not abandon people in moments of vulnerability such as childhood, disability, old age, unemployment, pregnancy, illness or misfortune. A citizen-centred state must provide a safety net for those who cannot support themselves and help households withstand shocks that would otherwise push them deeper into poverty.
The real actual threat to social grants in SA is not the DA. It is the current ANC corruption, low growth, collapsing administration and reckless public finances.
Every rand stolen from the state is a rand not available for a pensioner, a disabled person, a child or a social worker. Every failed bailout, inflated tender and cadre deployed into a job they cannot perform weakens the fiscal foundation of social support. A welfare system is only as secure as the state that funds and administers it.
This is why responsible financial management is not the enemy of compassion. It is the condition for compassion to endure.
The DA’s social development policy starts from that premise. We support a sustainable welfare safety net for the most vulnerable, funded by a growing economy and protected from corruption.
A DA-led national government will increase the child support grant to the food poverty line, extend support to learners until they complete matric, extend support to pregnant mothers to improve early nutrition, and make the disability grant system faster and fairer.
We will also ensure targeted support during food price shocks, stronger resourcing and remuneration for social workers, a more secure UIF system, and a serious investigation into whether a Basic Income Guarantee linked to economic growth is affordable and viable.
These are not the policies of a party planning to dismantle social support. They are the policies of a party determined to protect it from the people who have abused the state that must deliver it.
But social grants must be a floor beneath which no one is allowed to fall. They must never become the ceiling of people’s aspirations.
The ANC’s great failure was not that it expanded social grants. That was necessary in a country scarred by exclusion and poverty. Its failure was that it built no credible path from social support to economic independence. It managed poverty instead of defeating it. It kept grants flowing but allowed schools to fail, municipalities to collapse, crime to spread, investment to leave and jobs to disappear.
A grant can help a family survive the month. But it cannot by itself teach a child to read, fix a police station, repair a port, open a factory, or give a young person their first work opportunity.
That is why the DA’s vision of social development is inseparable from our broader vision for SA. We want a state that does the essentials well: education, healthcare, law and order, infrastructure, clean administration and a reliable safety net. And we want an economy in which citizens are free to build, invest, hire, work and flourish.
This is the distinction between dependency and citizenship.
Dependency politics asks people to be grateful for survival. Citizen-centred politics asks how government can help people regain agency and build independent lives. Dependency politics measures success by how many people remain reliant on the state. Citizen-centred politics measures success by how many people no longer need to.
This is the moral argument for welfare that works.
I have no doubt that most South Africans who fund the country with their taxes know that it is part of the basic infrastructure of a humane and stable society. Likewise, we all know that welfare without economic growth is a promise the state cannot keep.
SA needs both compassion and competence. It needs a welfare system that protects people and an economy that gives them a route out of poverty.
That is the DA’s offer: Your grant is safe, and your future will be better. That is how SA can work — for everyone.
- Hill-Lewis is DA leader
